


Chaos Theory

by AnotherWorld_AnotherTime



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-04-07 10:29:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 25,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14078925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnotherWorld_AnotherTime/pseuds/AnotherWorld_AnotherTime
Summary: Intel leads our heroes to recover a disk from the Brazilian terrorist group, Loucura. Mac and Jack take the disk back to Phoenix to see what information they can get from it. It doesn't take long for a simple stakeout to turn into something much more dangerous. Now if only Riley could get info from that disk that can save her friends and colleagues. Rated T for some descriptions of violence.I posted the prologue and the chapters as two separate stories on ff, but decided to combine them here since they're all part of the same 'episode'. For timeline, think somewhere post-Matty and pre-Cage...





	1. Prologue

Mac glanced behind him as he ran, full pelt, towards the exit. Or at least, what he sincerely hoped was the exit. The door was thick steel and there was an electronic magnetic lock holding it firmly closed. Riley had assured him, however, that their freedom, and their escape vehicle, was indeed on the other side of that door. Mac really hoped that Riley had enough time to override the lock and make the end of this mission a heck of a lot easier than it had been so far. Another shot rang out and Mac flinched as the round ricocheted off a barrel right next to him.

"Jack! I really need some cover, here! We actually managed to retrieve the disk. It would make for a really bad report for one of us to get shot now, this close to the exit!" Mac was already worried they wouldn't both make it to the door. He didn't want to have to do it when one of them had a bullet wound.

"I'm tryin', Mac! You know, there's 6 of them and 1 of me... do the math! Plus, you used 4 of my bullets blowing open that stupid safe!" Jack was feeling pinned down, and he had no idea how he was going to reach the door that Riley had marked as their exit, but he knew he had to use the ammo he had left to protect his friend. At any cost.

Mac ran a few feet further and ducked down behind some of the metal barrels, waiting for Riley to let them know their exit was clear and safe. Mac glanced over to his friend and stopped short. He drew a deep breath and started wracking his brains. One of the goons that had been chasing them since they 'acquired' the disk, was closing in on Jack's position, and it seemed that Jack had run out of ammo. "Jack! Watch out! Your 3 o'clock!"

To Mac's relief, Jack had seen the foe just in time and gave him a typically well-aimed punch to the gut. He followed up with a blow to the face before the big, but clearly slow, goon had even got a shot off. This was getting too close and Mac needed to do something about it. At least Jack now had another few rounds of ammo from the gun the, now unconscious, goon had dropped.

"Mac? Jack? Can you hear me? I'm in their system and hacking the lock. It's almost open." Mac had never been so relieved to hear Riley's voice as it came over their comms. He realised they were almost home and dry. But he wasn't leaving yet. Not without Jack. He risked a look over the top of the barrels to see how his friend, his brother, was doing.

Jack had resumed his position, crouched behind the old Jeep... the Jeep! That was it! Mac took a second to think through his plan, as the remaining 5 goons reloaded and regrouped. Mac heard the lock on the door beep as Riley relayed the message that the exit was clear. He knew that freedom was the other side of the door, just 10 feet away, but he could not - and would not - leave Jack to fend for himself. He knew the soldier was a capable man, more than capable of looking after himself, but he and Jack were a team. They were family. And Mac knew; you don't leave family behind.

"Jack! I've got a plan. But just to warn you, you're not going to like it."

"At this point, Mac, I'd put on a tutu and dance to the exit if it meant getting out alive!" Jack heard Mac let out a chuckle as, Jack knew, he imagined him in a tutu. "You better relay this big plan of yours. I'm pretty sure these goons are gonna start shooting..." No sooner had Jack said the word than the next shot rang out. "Dang it!"

Mac looked over to Jack's position and started barking instructions. "Jack, I need you to climb into the Jeep and take the parking brake off, if it has one. Once it's off, use the Jeep as your shield. Push it over here and stay behind it." Mac's orders were punctuated by the bullets bouncing against the steel of the Jeep and the occasional curse word from Jack.

"The Jeep doesn't have any doors, Mac! If I move from behind this wheel I'm an easy target." Jack looked around and quickly made a mental note of where the 5 foes were. He smiled as he reminded himself of the sixth, still unconscious by his feet. He let off a few more shots over the bonnet of the Jeep, aiming in the general direction of the closest enemy.

"I did tell you that you weren't going to like it..." Mac shouted across the large room, as Jack let out a large audible sigh. Mac knew that sigh and smiled to himself. It was the sigh Jack let out when he wanted Mac to know that he was going to follow the plan, but that he was doing it begrudgingly. "You need to do it now, Jack. Riley has secured our exit and we need to get going!"

Jack waited until he heard 2 of the shooters go to change weapons and quickly reached up and round into the truck. His left hand had just found the parking brake when a shot rang out. At the same time, Jack felt a familiar burning pain in his forearm and let out a shout in reflex. He heard Mac shout his name, but, ever determined, he pulled the parking brake off before pulling his injured arm away. Mac shouted his name again and Jack saw his blond hair and blue eyes appear over the top of the barrels.

"I did it, Mac. I got shot, but I did it. I told you it was a terrible plan." Jack tore his sleeve around the bullet wound and ripped off some of the shirt to create a makeshift bandage that would make Mac proud. Jack gritted his teeth and used his body weight to shift the Jeep forward. The strain made his arm hurt, but he couldn't do this one-handed. He saw blood seeping through the bandage but kept pushing until the Jeep began to move. Slowly but surely, it began to creep towards the exit, taking Jack with it.

Mac hadn't realised he was holding his breath until he saw the Jeep begin to move and let out a sigh of relief. "Jack, are you OK? How badly are you hurt?" Mac had heard the gunshot accompanied by a shout from Jack and had known he was hit. He just hoped it wasn't too bad and that Jack would be able to get to him. The fact that the Jeep was moving told Mac that his Texan friend was still able to move; that relieved his fears a little. Jack kept quiet, but continued pushing the Jeep towards Mac and the safety of the exit. Riley's voice came over the comms again asking the men what was wrong. She sounded worried, but both Mac and Jack were focused on getting themselves to that exit door.

That was, until one of the larger goons got bored of hiding and shooting at the two agents. He took matters into his own hands and began running towards Mac. Jack saw him make the move and shouted out to Mac to warn him. Mac prepared to fight, but the enemy was much bigger and faster than the one Jack had fought: Jack was worried that he wouldn't be able to defeat the guy by himself. More concerned by the immediate threat to Mac's safety than his own, Jack broke cover and ran towards his friend.

Jack didn't slow down as he approached Mac and he ran straight into the large goon with a shout. His arm hurt like he couldn't believe, but there were bigger things to worry about right now. Bullets were still flying, Jack was out of ammo again and another of the enemy was beginning to look like he might come join the fight. Mac and Jack looked each other in the eye and nodded imperceptibly fast. Anyone who didn't know them wouldn't have noticed the glance, but both men knew what the other was thinking. They both kicked out at the man who was trying to attack them, catching him off guard and winding him. Jack smiled: "Let's get outta here, dude!" Mac didn't need telling twice.

They took their opportunity and ran for the exit. Mac glanced at Jack's arm as they reached the door and noted the blood-stained bandage. Mac was relieved to find the door pushed open with ease. Not that he doubted Riley's ability; she had proved herself many times over. This was just one more of those times. Jack pushed Mac through the door as another foe gained on them. Jack punched him hard with his uninjured arm before falling through the door himself. Mac was prepared and slammed the door shut in the enemy's face.

Jack and Mac ran towards the waiting car where Riley was shouting their names. The agents didn't bother looking back, even when a shot rang out and a bullet bounced off the car roof. They jumped into the car and closed the door, as Riley hit the gas and drove them out of there. "You guys OK?" Riley seemed genuinely concerned. She was becoming very fond of this family and she didn't want to have to say goodbye to any of them.

However, even as she asked, she realised Jack was laughing. "Yeah, Ri, we're OK. Slight bullet wound, but nothing a little beer and Bruce Willis won't fix." Jack had relaxed and Mac was removing the piece of shirt from his arm.

"It's more than just a flesh wound, Jack. You'll need stitches. And we might want to take the bullet out before you go home for beer!" Mac was always amazed at how easy it was for Jack to joke about his injuries. 'I guess when you've had as many as Jack, you learn to cope,' Mac thought. Jack simply shrugged, but he did wince a little as Mac placed a real bandage on his arm.

"MacGyver, Jack, tell me you got the disk." Matty's stern voice came over the phone. The agents hadn't realised she was listening in and Jack suddenly stopped chuckling to himself, as her authoritative tone made him freeze. Riley looked at them briefly in the rearview mirror as she realised she didn't know the answer to that question herself. She knew they had retrieved it from the office, but didn't know if it had survived the ensuing fight in the garage.

"Yes, Matty, we got it. There was more security than we anticipated, but Riley's skills and Jack's fists managed to get us out just in time." Jack looked a little too pleased with the compliment and Riley rolled her eyes.

"Well, when Jack's had his stitches and has stopped saying 'I told you so', bring the disk into the office. Be ready to give a full report." Mac promised that the 3 of them would be there as soon as humanly possible. Until then, he would keep the disk safe. Matty's voice came over the phone one last time before she hung up.

"Oh, and Jack?"

"Yes, Matty?"

"Maybe save the beer and Bruce Willis marathon until the disk is in my hands and the mission is over?"

Matty hung up the phone with a sigh. Riley and Mac took their turn to chuckle as Riley directed the car towards the nearest ER and Mac looked behind them for a tail. Seeing they were safe, he took a moment to relax, and thank any gods that might be listening that they were out safe. At least for now.


	2. Chapter 2

Jack and Mac strolled into the Phoenix office laughing over some shared inside joke; Riley came in behind them shaking her head with a smile. They had returned from the ER quickly thanks to a well-placed phone call from their boss. She was waiting for them now: big screen on, laptop open, ready for the disk that the men had gained from the warehouse. "It's good to see you both in one piece." Matty glanced at Jack's left arm, bandaged and held in a sling and added, "Mostly."

"Ah, I knew you cared really! I think you..." Mac coughed loudly to draw Jack's attention and interrupt him before it was too late. Jack, then, also caught sight of Matty's facial expression and quickly stopped himself from saying whatever was about to leave his mouth. Riley, who had already sat herself in the armchair by the big screen, let out a quiet snicker but stopped short when Matty glanced back at her. It was true that Matty did care. She cared deeply about her agents, and she was even secretly quite fond of Jack. However, it wouldn't do for the whole world to know. She needed to maintain an air of authority and an element of mystery. She held out her hand, palm up, and looked from Jack to Mac and back again.

Mac snapped out of his reverie - he was busy considering what the end of Jack's sentence would've been - and realised she was waiting for him to hand over the disk. Mac put his foot up on the glass coffee table and pulled the small disk out of his shoe where he had put it for safe keeping. He simply shrugged at Matty's raised eyebrows and handed it over. Riley took the disk and put it into the waiting laptop. In a few clicks, she had brought the laptop's desktop up onto the big screen on the wall. The 3 remaining agents watched in quiet awe, as Riley's expert fingers danced quickly across the keyboard. On the screen, they could see that she was busy trying to hack through an encryption; she was reading and writing in code that none of the other agents understood.

"So, this disk really belongs to 'Loucura'?" Mac asked

"That's right, blondie." Matty assured, "Intel suggested that this disk could tell us a lot about their secret operations. They're apparently staging a coup, which would bring down the, currently stable, Brazilian government and replace it with a much more volatile one. One that hates the USA even more than the current regime."

"No wonder the security was tight!" Mac exclaimed.

"Who's 'low-chura'?" Jack asked. His knowledge of Brazilian government and intelligence wasn't as up-to-date as it could've been.

"Loucura, Jack. They're a Brazilian terrorist group," Mac responded, "and they really hate Americans."

"So… a coup would be bad?"

"Yes, Jack, a coup would be bad!" Matty replied impatiently. "Coups are sort of a bad thing in general, but in this case, it could be really bad news for the US." Seeing Jack's blank stare, she rolled her eyes and continued: "As you know, the USA's connection with Brazil has always been unpredictable." Jack nodded at this, which gave Matty some sense of relief. "Right now, the two governments are managing to work together to build some semblance of an international relationship. The association between the two countries is the best it has been in a long time. There are worries on both sides that any changes of leadership would destroy any progress. Loucura would make it their goal to destroy it. They believe the USA shouldn't be involved with Brazil in any way; the group would sever any remaining ties to the US and would make international relations impossible. They have even talked about waging war with us in their propaganda videos."

"Yeah. OK. A coup would be bad," Jack conceded.

While they had been talking, Riley had broken through the encryption, bringing up a folder onto the desktop. There were several large files saved there, but their names appeared to be nonsensical strings of letters. Where should they start looking?

"Sorry to break up the party," Riley interrupted. "I'm not sure what all these file names mean, but the encryption was fairly easy to break. A little too easy, actually." She mused over that curious fact as Matty, Jack and Mac stared intently at the files on the screen. They appeared to be deep in thought until Jack gave up and just looked at her in exasperation.

"I thought you said you broke the encryption, Ri? These file names are a load of baloney!" Jack said accusingly. Riley's response was simply to shrug, which didn't satisfy Jack any. He looked over at Mac instead. Mac could always be relied upon to solve a puzzle. He noticed that Mac's eyes were narrowed slightly and his lips were pursed. It was his 'gimme a minute, I've got this' face; Jack knew all he had to do was wait. And he didn't have to wait very long at all.

"It's a code," Mac began, "and a pretty simple one at that. Look, all they've done is simply replace each letter with the one that follows it in the alphabet. A becomes B, B becomes C, and so on." Mac pointed at the first file, labelled 'espq qpjout' and continued, "This one means 'drop points'. That might be a good place to start?" Matty nodded in agreement and Riley double-clicked.

She instantly regretted it.

The laptop screeched at her and dozens of warning boxes popped up on the desktop. Riley cursed aloud, producing a fatherly tut from Jack and prompting Matty to ask what had happened. "It's a virus," she explained. "It was hidden in the file and now it's spreading." She was frantically trying to disconnect the laptop from the Phoenix servers so that the virus didn't infect any other computers. She managed to isolate the laptop from the network and continued to work frantically, to save any information she could from the disk. As she did, Mac read snippets of information from the file that she had opened on the screen, trying to get anything useful amid the chaos.

"I knew this was all too easy," Riley groaned. "It's going to take me hours to get any information off this disk. I can't put it into another computer because there might be another virus, or a worm, and I can't risk it infecting anything else. I'm just going to have to run diagnostics, set up a firewall and hope for the best. I'll get what I can, I promise. Sorry Mac."

"No, no, don't be sorry, Riley," Mac responded, "I think I might've got a location of a drop point from all of that." When he saw the looks he was getting from Jack, Matty and Riley, he continued: "I'm a fast thinker, I'm also a fast reader. While you were trying to combat the virus, parts of the document could be read. There's a drop point here in Los Angeles, by the statue in Chace Park. Down at the Marina."

"Makes sense," responded Jack, "it's a good place to find transport out of the US. Public place, near the airport. I can see why they picked it."

"OK." Matty said this one word decisively and it made everyone jump and pay attention to their boss. They knew it meant she was about to give instructions and they also knew she would only want to say them once. "Jack, Mac, you're going to stake out the statue in Chace Park. Since you stole the disk, we can assume Loucura will be on alert, making moves to try and retrieve it. See if you can spot any suspicious activity. Riley, you stay here and try to decrypt the data on the disk. There must be something else on there. Bozer is in the lab. He can stay there for now but I'll fill him in and let him know the mission brief in case we need an extra pair of hands."

Jack, Mac and Riley were still staring intently at Matty, obviously assuming she had more to say.

"What? Go!" Matty's command made them all start. Jack and Mac stood quickly to leave and Riley resumed tapping the keyboard.

"Sweet. I love stakeouts!" Jack turned to Mac and held out the fist of his good arm, "I'll get the snacks!"

Mac shook his head and smiled. He bumped Jack's extended fist as the two men walked out of the door.

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"So, these 'low-crura' people? They're a pretty big deal in Brazil?" Jack was eating chips and talking with his mouth full. Mac hated when he did that, so Jack now mostly did it just to rile him up.

"Nice, Jack… can you chew without showing me what you're eating? And it's Loucura. It's Portuguese for 'madness', and the group certainly live up to their name." Mac really did care about Jack, but the man really knew how to push his buttons. Mac was mildly impressed that Jack had managed to open the bag with his teeth and his good arm, but the annoyance outweighed any admiration Mac might have felt. "They've tried to blow up government buildings, they kidnapped an official and there was an attempt on the president's life which they claimed responsibility for." Mac turned his nose up at Jack's chewing and focused instead on watching the statue, as Jack grunted in understanding. This terrorist group was no joke.

The agents were sat on a park bench. They'd been there for 3 and a half hours and, so far, had no luck spotting suspicious activity. Jack had been through a bag of chips already and had opened the second one – Mac suspected – just to annoy Mac. They sat in silence for a while, watching various people come and go around the foot of the Helmsman statue. The only nearby noise was Jack's chewing, though at least, Mac observed, he was now doing this with his mouth closed. Mac's busy mind was beginning to drift, thinking about Riley and wondering whether she had made any progress, when he suddenly realized Jack was quiet. He then felt Jack sit up a little straighter beside him. The older agent had noticed something.

"What is it, Jack?"

"There," Jack said quietly, "the dude in the purple cap, navy-blue shirt and jeans. He's been at the base of the statue for 2 minutes and just put his satchel down on the ground. What self-respecting guy carries a satchel anyway? That's suspicious even before he set it down ready to be handed off."

Mac and Jack watched to see if the man would make another move, and they watched closely as he tipped the peak of his cap. They knew it was a signal to someone, so they waited patiently for something to happen. Then, the man in the cap looked right at them. Not towards them. Right at them. They realized it was a set up a moment too late.

As soon as the man looked in their direction, the agents heard an electric buzz behind them. Mac registered that the sound was a taser right before he felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck and blacked out. Jack hadn't had enough time to register what the sound was, but the same sharp pain told him this wasn't good. He just hoped it would end well.


	3. Chapter 3

Riley was becoming more and more frustrated. She really did know that this wasn't her fault, but she should've been suspicious when the encryption was so easy to break. The virus had worked fast and it had attacked the laptop and its systems in more ways than she could count. She had a feeling she'd not yet even scratched the surface of the damage.

"Hey. I brought you coffee." Bozer's voice made Riley jump, but she looked up with a smile. Bozer had said the word 'coffee' and Riley realised how much she needed one of those at that moment. Staring at a computer screen for 4 hours can really take its toll. Bozer was stood at the door, still dressed in his lab coat, holding two cups of hot coffee. Riley smiled again and Bozer correctly took it as an invite to come into the office.

"How's it going?" Bozer asked, looking across at the computer screen. "Erm… nope. Looking at that screen doesn't help… I have no idea what any of that means."

Riley began pointing at the various boxes and windows se had open on her screen: "This here is the encryption key that should help me read the files. This window is where I'm attempting to complete the code to get rid of the virus and…" Riley stopped as she looked over at Bozer. His eyes were glazing over and he was staring through the computer screen now, rather than at it. "I get it. Shutting up now. Thanks for the coffee, though."

"Oh, no no no, sorry! I mean, this is all really interesting stuff…" Bozer chuckled as he realized Riley didn't believe a word of it. "Yeah, alright, I don't get all the technical stuff, maybe, but what you're doing is really cool. I hope you can get some intel out of it for our boys to follow up."

Riley didn't look too hopeful, but she was thankful for the welcome distraction and she and Bozer fell into easy conversation as she took a break from staring at a screen. The two of them had been talking for over 20 minutes when Matty walked in.

"Have you heard from Jack or Mac?" Matty didn't really waste any time getting to the crux of the issue. It was actually one of the things Riley really appreciated about her boss. "They said they would check in with me every half hour and it's been 45 minutes since I last heard from either of them." Riley and Bozer both shook their heads no, but the young agents both pulled out their phones to double check for calls or texts anyway. Matty preferred when her agents were thorough. Nothing. "Mmm. Bozer, try calling Mac. Riley, try Jack. Let's see if either one of them answers."

Bozer and Riley both dialed as requested and waited as the phones rang on the other end. Neither of them had any success. No-one was answering. It was at this point that Matty began to get suspicious and asked Riley to pull up traffic cameras for Chace Park and the Marina. She wanted to see if Jack's car was still parked there, and asked Riley to do a facial recognition search for the men. Matty was clearly a confused mix of angry and concerned, but she was trying to refrain from judgement until she knew the truth. Her best agents could be in trouble. Or they could be having a nap on a park bench. Either way, she'd find them and deal with whatever came.

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Jack woke up first. He tried to lift his hands and rub his heavy eyes. When his hands couldn't quite do what he wanted, he tried to move his feet. Nothing. He managed to drag his eyes open, finally, and realised his hands and feet were bound. He was lying on what felt like concrete, but the room was far too dark to be able to confirm that suspicion. He did his best to look around and saw a crack of light that looked like it might be coming from underneath a door. He felt behind him with his hands, with what limited movement he had, and brushed against someone else's hand.

"Mac? Mac, is that you?" Jack shuffled himself backwards, closer to the other person, and tried to sit up. His eyes were beginning to adjust to the dark and he wanted to see if the other form in the room was friend or foe. He grabbed the other person's wrist and felt a familiar watch strap. "Mac!" Jack breathed a sigh of relief. He sat himself up as best he could under the circumstances and gave Mac a few soft kicks while repeating his name.

Eventually, Mac groaned. This was a good sign, Jack supposed, but kept talking to Mac and saying his name until he got a response.

"Jack?" Mac sounded groggy, but Jack breathed a sigh of relief.

"Hey buddy, how you doing?"

"Mmmm. I've been better, Jack. Where are we?"

"Honestly, I haven't a clue. I don't remember anything after that taser and I can't see well enough to make out where we are."

Mac was beginning to come around and Jack noticed him struggle a little against the restraints that bound him, too. Mac's brain was already beginning to think of ways to get out, but without any clue as to what was in the room, and without a pair of hands to create something, his options were limited. "Yeah, I remember the statue and the taser but nothing else. It must've been a setup. Somehow, Loucura knew we were there; they were definitely ready for us." Mac stopped talking as he, too, shuffled himself into a sitting position. He sniffed the air and cocked his head as if he were straining to hear something. "I can smell detergent. And there's a faint smell of oil and machinery. Do you hear that?"

Jack closed his eyes – a rather pointless exercise considering the darkness of the room – cocked his head to one side and listened, trying to hear what Mac could. "Yeah, yeah, I hear it. Like a low rumble. What do you think it is?"

"I don't know, but considering the soap or detergent smell, it could be an industrial launderette, washing machines and dryers, or perhaps a factory producing the stuff."

"We said we'd check in every half hour," Jack suddenly remembered, "so Matty has to have realised something's up by now. I don't know how long we've been unconscious, but we must've missed at least one check in by now. Her spidey sense will be tingling for sure."

Mac couldn't help but chuckle at his friend. He gave an obligatory nod of confirmation too, but Jack didn't notice in the low light. Mac's eyes however, like Jack's, were beginning to adjust to that limited light, and he shuffled himself towards a shadow that he guessed was the wall. When he came up against brick, he relaxed back into a more comfortable sitting position and urged Jack to follow suit. They sat in silence for a good number of minutes. Jack was dying to speak – he never was good at letting silence hang in the air – but he knew that Mac was thinking and was trying to give him space, and time, to consider all the options.

Jack was just about to give up on staying quiet, and opened his mouth to speak, when the two men heard a keypad beep on the other side of the door, followed by the sound of a bolt being drawn back. They looked towards what they had assumed was the door and, sure enough, it opened with a bang. They had to squint against the bright light that came pouring through the now-open door, but they could see the silhouettes of two burly-looking men standing in the doorway.

"They're awake." The man that spoke had an accent that Jack couldn't place right away. He then cursed himself inwardly for his stupidity, when he realised it was a high likelihood that the men were Brazilian. It was a fair bet that it was the Loucura that had taken them both, but what wasn't clear was why. Apart from the obvious, he supposed, to retrieve the disk, but they didn't actually have the disk. The men must have searched them before they tied them up, and already realised the disk was not in their possession.

"Wow! You guys are big, but not all that smart, huh? If 'they're awake' is the sharpest observation you can come up with, today is going to be a long day." Jack knew that angering their captors seemed like a dumb move. He knew that they would take it out on him, but that was exactly his plan. It was always his plan. Whenever there was another person's life on the line, especially Riley, Bozer or – as in this case – Mac, he always tried to draw the negative attention onto himself. He knew that if the bad guys were wailing on him, they weren't punching his friends, and that was all the incentive he needed to get the bad guys to hate him more. Because bad guys were generally short-tempered and a little bit stupid, it worked every time. In this instance, it worked a little too well.

"You are right, _meu amigo_ , this is going to be a long day." He walked over to Jack, lifted his foot and kicked the older agent in the abdomen. "For you." Jack had doubled over with the force of the kick, but refused to satisfy the Brazilian man-mountain with any more of a reaction than that.

The two Brazilian bodyguards picked Mac and Jack up off the ground with surprising ease and dragged them towards the door of the room. With their legs bound, Mac and Jack could do nothing to help or hinder their abductors in this. Jack, still trying his hardest to make sure he was the most hated of their two prisoners, couldn't quite resist the temptation to use his 'charm' as they hauled him along.

"Hey, Andre the Giant, watch the boots. You'd be surprised how often I lose one," at this point he looked meaningfully at Mac, the man generally responsible for Jack's lost laces and boots, and continued, "and I'd rather not buy another new pair." Jack flinched before the punch even came. The guard's fist collided with the side of Jack's head and he couldn't help but let out a pained breath in response, as his vision went blurry. But, on the plus side, he knew he was getting under their skin. He knew this plan inside out, he used it so often, and it always worked.

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Riley had managed to pull up all the cameras from around Chace Park from the time after Jack and Mac's last check-in. There were a lot of cameras as it was a public space, so there was a lot of sorting and searching to do. Matty told Riley to stop when she saw Jack's car in the lot next to the park. "Is the car still there, Riley?" Riley fast forwarded the footage from the same camera as far as she could, until it was running in real time, and confirmed the worst: Jack's car had been there since the men had told them they arrived at the park, and it was still there now. So where were Jack and Mac?

Riley kept searching the other camera footage for a glimpse of their faces and pulled up video that showed them sat on a park bench, talking. And eating, in Jack's case. Matty watched carefully as Riley played the footage from the agents' last check-in, in double time.

It was Matty that saw Jack sit up straighter. The movement was almost undetectable, but Matty's well-trained eye noticed the change in Jack's behaviour and his facial expression. "Wait, play it normal speed," she requested. Riley hadn't seen what Matty saw, but she knew better than to question her boss's instruction. She slowed the footage down to normal speed and the two women watched the video helplessly as they saw two men in dark clothes creep up behind their friends. The men had tasers and used them to knock Mac and Jack unconscious before hauling them off.

"Riley, can you check where the men took Jack and Mac?" Matty's voice had taken on a more urgent tone, now that she knew for certain her agents were in danger. She watched impatiently as Riley tracked the men's movements over the cameras. They took the men back to the carpark and bundled them into a beige van. "License plate?" Matty asked. She had resorted to as few words as possible. She generally became even more efficient in the face of danger or trouble.

"I can't get a full plate," Riley responded, "as it's hidden by all those bushes and the lamp post. But I think I can get a partial one."

"Good enough," Matty responded. "Run whatever you can and find out who that van belongs to. Even better, find out where it went. We need to find our men."


	4. Chapter 4

“So, I will ask you again. Who do you work for?” The Brazilian man interrogating Jack and Mac was nowhere near as large as the burly men who had collected them from the room, but he was somehow much more terrifying. He had olive skin, dark hair and dark eyes. His eyes were set back in his head and, in the room’s dim, artificial light, they were cast in shadows making him appear very threatening indeed. “We know you work for a government agency, we just do not know which one.”

“I’m telling you, you got the wrong guys. We were just enjoying a sunny afternoon on a park bench.” Jack’s tactic of drawing the attention onto himself, had been mostly successful so far. Mac had received a punch to the face and was already sporting a black eye, but Jack’s gunshot was bleeding again (it hadn’t taken the man long to use that wound to his advantage). “Whoever you think we are,” Jack continued, “you are way wrong.”

“Hmm… you like to think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?” The interrogator smirked at Jack.

“Actually, that guy over there’s the smart one,” Jack stated, as he nodded towards Mac. “My friend is a genius. I wish I could tell ya’ I have his smarts, but it just ain’t true.””

“You don’t say,” the man replied, sarcastically. He laughed out loud at this point: it was a deep, sinister laugh. If Jack hadn’t been tied to a chair in the middle of a grey, metal room without windows, he would’ve laughed himself at how cliché it sounded but, as it was, he just wasn’t in the mood to share the joke. He looked over at Mac and realised Mac was smiling to himself. ‘Really?’ Jack mouthed across to Mac. He couldn’t believe that Mac was chuckling at his expense in the middle of an interrogation. Mac shrugged as the olive-skinned man curbed his laughter and bent down to look Jack right in the eye. “I keep telling you that we know you work for a government agency. I don’t think that you believe me. How can I convince you?” He stood up straight and nodded to someone behind Jack. The two bodyguards had been posted at the closed door and had stood there silently so far. 

The next moment, Jack felt a strong arm around his neck. Jack could only guess it was one of the burly guys who had brought them into the room, but he couldn’t see for sure. The man was squeezing hard. Jack couldn’t breathe. His arms and legs were tied to the metal chair with zip ties so he couldn’t lift them to defend himself. His vision started to go blurry and Mac noticed his lips were starting to turn blue. Just as Mac saw Jack’s eyes begin to close and his limbs go limp, he shouted for the man to stop.

“OK, OK, we believe you! Let’s say we’re convinced!” Mac knew that they could not reveal who they worked for, but he also did not want to see Jack suffer. The man nodded again and the bodyguard let go of his hold on Jack’s neck. Jack spluttered and coughed. He breathed in as much air as he could, but his breaths were raspy and ragged. His eyes were still closed, but he was alive. “What makes you think that we work for the government?” Mac pressed.

“It is very unusual for those being interrogated to ask the questions, do you not think?” the man began, “But I will humour you. For now. You see, we know you took the disk. We know that you are still in possession of the disk. And we know that you have tried to look at the files on the disk. We laid a trap at the drop point we implanted on the disk to catch anyone who saw it. However, we are also tracking the disk itself. The virus embedded on the file was designed to track whoever found it. This leads us to you. We do not know the name of your agency,” he continued, “but we suspect that a US government agency operates out of that building where you took the disk.”

“We’re not telling you anything,” Jack rasped. His eyes were open and he was just about breathing normally again, but he still looked – and sounded – terrible. “You can go to hell.”

The man spun on his heel very quickly and caught Jack unaware. He threw a quick punch to Jack’s jaw, followed by another to his ribs. The man looked like he was beginning to lose his temper: “You are an infuriating man. Did you know that?” Mac knew that Jack tended to have that effect on people.

“Yeah,” Jack gasped, as a small trickle of blood crept out of the corner of his mouth, “I’ve been told as much before. I’d apologise, but I’m really not that sorry.”

The man stormed out of the room, followed by the two large men, without another word.

“Jack! What are you doing? You’re just making him angry!” Mac was incredulous. He was annoyed at Jack for winding up the man who seemed to hold their immediate fate in his hands. However, he was also concerned for Jack. His friend’s face was exhibiting a number of red bruises, the bullet wound was oozing blood down his arm and Jack was hunched in his chair from the blow to his ribs. “How’re the ribs?”

Jack tried to sit up a little straighter in his chair to show Mac he was fine, but he quickly regretted it. Jack inhaled sharply, but refused to double over again. “I’ll live,” Jack declared through gritted teeth. “We just need to work out what they want and find a way out Any ideas on that front, by the way?”

“No,” Mac admitted. He had been using his keen observation skills to see if there was something in the room he could use to help the two of them escape. The reality was, the metallic room was bare. Mac had tried to undo the zip ties on his wrists, but he needed something sharp to help him and there was nothing useful in the room at all. Even if they could untie themselves, Mac knew there were at least 4 bolts on the other side of the door – he had heard them being pulled across or turned when the man exited – and there was no way they could get out of the room.

A moment later, as Mac was still deep in thought, the bolts on the other side of the door slid open. Jack sat up in his chair, unwilling to show weakness, and Mac listened carefully to see if he could work out what kind of locks they were working with. The door swung open wide and the man walked back in with the 2 bodyguards. Jack was positioned with his back to the door, but Mac was opposite him, facing the doorway. Jack did not like the look in Mac’s eyes. Mac could see the taser that the man held in his hands, and the olive-skinned man did not look any calmer than 5 minutes before, when he had left.

“I have a proposal for you both,” he began. “Well, I call it proposal as if you have a choice,” he let out his deep, sinister chuckle and continued, “but we all know that you gentlemen aren’t really in a position to make a choice, now, are you?” The man came and stood between Mac and Jack again, facing towards Jack and looking decidedly frustrated. “You see, I don’t care who you work for. Not really. All that matters, is that you are Americans and that you work for the government.”

Jack let out a snort of derision, which he noticed brought a flash of anger to the man’s eyes. He was beginning to think that might not be such a good thing. The man had his limits, Jack imagined, and he might be reaching them. Jack needed to stay awake long enough to give Mac the time to think of a way out. He regretted the snort when the man thrust the stun gun into Jack’s ribcage and pressed the button. Jack refused to make any noise, but he squeezed his eyes shut as the shock made its way through his body. It wasn’t like he hadn’t suffered electric shocks before, but knowing what they felt like didn’t make them any less painful when they happened. When the shock stopped and Jack opened his eyes, he noticed a very delighted, disturbing grin spread across the man’s face.

“What is it you want?” Mac’s voice sounded distant to Jack, who was still recovering from the shock, but the man turned his head to respond.

“I want the two of you to carry out a bombing for me,” the man said. Mac was taken aback by the man’s direct and concise answer. “You see, the Brazilian president is in town, and we have a plan to… get rid of him,” the man said pointedly, “however, we thought it might be much more fun if two government agents were to carry it out. Imagine,” he continued gleefully, “how much disruption it would cause between our countries if American agents killed the Brazilian president! There would be an uproar. And in the chaos that would follow, Loucura would step up and take over the country.”

“Foolproof,” Jack whispered. “I’m sure that you’d make a great president you crazy…” Before Jack could complete his insult, the man pressed the stun gun against his sternum and pressed the button again.

“You will do as we ask,” the man said, much more calmly now. “We will simply not accept ‘no’ for an answer. So, what do you say?”

Jack looked the man straight in the eye – those haunting, dark eyes that seemed to demand respect and fear – and responded proudly: “No.” Jack felt a sharp, burning pain in his abdomen. He knew he had cried out because he heard Mac shout stop and he somehow knew he was going to pass out, even though he was fighting the urge.

Mac had known that his friend was in pain, but he knew the pain must be bad if Jack was making a sound. He had to shout at the man. He had to, even though Jack would be mad at him for that. Whether it was him shouting, or whether it was the fact that Jack was now unconscious that made the man stop, he didn’t care, as long as he had stopped.

The man spun round and stared at Mac. Mac stared back, not saying a word. The man bent close to Mac and whispered in his ear: “You will do as I ask. I know you care about your friend and I know he cares about you. If you do not do what we want, there will be consequences.” The sinister man stood straight again and turned as if to go. Mac saw him hesitate and put the stun gun down on the floor. The man turned as if he had forgotten something and swung his fist at Mac. The punch landed in his abdomen and made Mac gasp to catch his breath. He did the same again quickly with his other fist. Mac looked at him, eyes confused. He was struggling to catch his breath and could not sit up straight. “I hate Americans,” the man spat. He shrugged, smirked, and walked quickly out of the room, followed by his henchmen.

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It had been over 2 and a half hours since Matty had heard from Mac and Jack. She was worried, but she had only admitted this fact to herself so far. On the outside, she was remaining calm, cool and collected. “Any news, Riley?” Matty looked up at Riley from the documents on the table. She had been looking into Loucura for the last hour, trying to find leads on people of interest and places they might have taken her agents. Riley was still working on the partial plate she had found.

“Erm, yeah, I think so…” Riley was unsure if what she had discovered merited being called ‘news’, but she wanted to give Matty something – anything. “The partial plate hasn’t turned up any names or ID’s, but it’s still running through databases. However, I tracked the van as best I could using traffic cams. It drove around LA but it didn’t seem to be heading for anywhere in particular. It’s like it was trying to lose a tail. I lost it somewhere in Beverly Hills, but then it reappeared in Westwood, and headed out to where Van Nuys airport is. I’m just looking at the cameras outside the airport entrance now to see if I can see…” There it was. Matty stood up and moved towards the big screen.

“Is that the same van?” she asked. She watched as Riley zoomed into the license plate and Matty recognised the familiar numbers. She knew it was before Riley even confirmed it. “Go get Bozer,” Matty ordered, “take him with you to Van Nuys and search it. Check the security footage at the airport and see if our boys were taken through there by Loucura. Get Bozer to look through the van and see if he can find anything left behind. 

“You think it’s Loucura?” Riley asked.

“Mmm, who else would it be?” Matty assured her. “I just wish we knew more. I don’t know why they took our boys and it’s driving me crazy. I’m not usually the last to know things.”

“Sorry,” Riley murmured. She was frustrated too. Mad that she couldn’t find anything more on the disk; mad that she couldn’t find out who the van belonged to; mad that she wasn’t helping Mac or Jack. She felt guilty that she wasn’t able to give more.

“No. Don’t be.” Matty turned and looked Riley in the eye. “It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. We’ll get them back, Riley, we always do.”

Riley nodded sombrely and walked out the door to find Bozer and meet up with her assigned team of agents, who had been on standby to go as soon as there was news. She wondered what Phoenix would do next if Loucura had taken Mac and Jack to Brazil. She guessed that Matty would send them there to retrieve her guys, but it would be tricky to get the Brazilian government to understand what American agents were doing there in the first place. This one could get messy. 

The agents had already been armed and ready to go, and Bozer had jumped up to leave as soon as Riley appeared at the door of the lab, so it wasn’t long at all before they all arrived at Van Nuys airport. Riley and Bozer hadn’t talked much on the journey, just confirmed the instructions and sat thinking about where Mac and Jack might be. They were both worried for their friends. They knew the guys could take care of themselves, but who knew what Loucura were capable of.

Once the Phoenix van pulled into the carpark, Bozer made his way to the cream van, that Riley had been tracking, with two of the agents. The other two went with Riley into the main airport building to find the security tapes and ask questions. The airport was primarily used for small airlines and private ‘planes: much more discreet than LAX. Loucura wouldn’t stand a chance getting two American government agents out of the country through the main airport. Here, people asked fewer questions. As long as your aircraft was licensed to fly out of there, no one minded too much who was on board. Changing your flight manifest at the last minute was perfectly normal and no one would wonder too much about it.

One of the agents with Bozer broke the lock on the van’s sliding door and slid it back with his gun at the ready, just in case. There was no need for the precaution: the van was empty. Once the agent had looked through the van, including front seats, and confirmed it was clear, Bozer jumped into the back to find evidence of Mac and Jack having been there. “Ugh!” Bozer was disgusted with all the old fast food wrappers and empty food containers that littered the van. He asked the agents to bag a few of the straws, hoping that they might be able to get some DNA evidence from them later. He stopped short when he spotted a piece of blue fabric under a slightly newer wrapper. He pulled it out and sighed, “Oh no.” It was Jack’s sling. The one they had given him in the ER after he’d had his bullet wound stitched up.

It confirmed what they already knew: Jack and Mac were in that van at some point. There was no blood, so that was at least comforting. Sort of. Bozer continued looking, hoping that there might be some evidence of where Jack had Mac had been taken to, or what the plan was. He sifted through the rubbish eager to find something useful. He didn’t find anything useful, per say, although Mac would certainly disagree if he were there. Because underneath a pizza box, covered in sauce but none the worse for wear, Bozer discovered Mac’s pocket knife. Mac must be really annoyed he didn’t have this (though he suspected the knife had been taken from him) but at least Bozer could give it back if they found him. When they found him. When. Bozer told himself to stay positive. He instructed the agents to swab and take evidence from the van, while he himself walked into the main building to find Riley. He silently prayed that she had found something decidedly more helpful.

“Hey, Riley, what you found?” Bozer startled Riley for the second time that day, as he walked into the security room. If the circumstances weren’t so dire, this place would be Riley’s idea of heaven, he thought. There were monitors, computers and keyboards everywhere you looked. Riley was sat at a desk in the centre of the room looking through footage. She appeared to be scanning footage from the cameras in the carpark.

“Nothing yet. I’m trying to find out when the van arrived at the airport. The guy behind the desk says he doesn’t remember Mac or Jack coming through the airport, but they might have been snuck in round the back.” Riley was staring at the screens intently watching the footage whiz quickly across the screens.

“Well, look what I found in the van.” Bozer held up his pieces of evidence – Jack’s sling and Mac’s knife – for Riley to see. She tore her eyes away from the screens for a brief moment to take in Bozer’s evidence. There was a flash of recognition as she understood what that meant and then she turned back to the screens. Now, more than ever, they needed to know where their friends went after they had been in that van.

“There!” She suddenly slowed the video down and Bozer leant in closer to see what she could see. Bozer and Riley watched as the cream van pulled into the carpark and stopped. They watched as one man got out of the driver’s side. They watched as he pulled out his phone and made a short phone call. They watched as he got into a black unmarked car and drove away. Bozer and Riley exchanged worried glances. Riley fast forwarded the footage showing the van, but there was nothing. No one else got out of the van, no one got in.

“I’ll call Matty,” Bozer said. Riley was angry and she was frustrated. They had been following this stupid van for hours. A lead that they thought would get them closer to Jack and Mac. In reality it had taken them further away. They had already known Jack and Mac had been in that van, they knew now for sure that it had been long enough for them to have their sling and pocket knife taken away, but their boys had never been here at Van Nuys. Loucura had led them on a wild goose chase. Matty would be fuming. Her agents were still gone and their only lead – that stupid beige van – was a dead end.


	5. Chapter 5

Jack’s sling and Mac’s pocket knife were sitting on the table in the middle of the room. Nobody had spoken a word for 5 minutes: not since Riley and Bozer had finished telling their boss everything they had discovered on their recon at Van Nuys. Matty had listened carefully to all of it without interrupting, but Riley had run out of information for her 5 minutes ago and, since then, Matty had simply stared at the big screen, despite it being devoid of any actual information.

“We need to find out where they’ve gone.” Matty finally broke the silence, but Riley suspected that her boss was talking more to herself than anyone else in the room. Bozer looked over at Riley with raised eyebrows. Neither of them knew how to respond so they decided to stay quiet. They both knew by now that, where Matty was concerned, silence was the best option if they had nothing useful to say. Matty turned towards them, “Riley, did you ever find out who that van belongs to?”

“Erm, no, not really. I tracked it down, but it came back to a fake name. Fake address, fake everything. It was useless. Sorry.”

“Riley, you need to stop apologising. None of this is your fault. It seems that Loucura were much more prepared for us than we thought… too prepared, in fact.”

“They knew we were coming?” Bozer realised this truth just a few moments after his boss had. “How did they know?”

“The intel we received about that disk must’ve been planted. They wanted us to take it. The files, the drop point, the virus. You were right, Riley, it was all too easy.” Matty looked mad now. On the verge of furious, in fact. She was angry at herself more than anything. She should’ve seen this coming, she thought; realised that this disk, its info and the drop point were all just a little too convenient.

Riley saw the anger and frustration on her boss’s face, but she must have also spotted a hint of guilt, too, as she returned the reassurance, “It’s not your fault either, Matty. None of us saw this coming – not even Mac.”

“You’re right,” Matty sighed, resolute, “there’s no point blaming ourselves. We need another lead and we need it fast. Goodness knows what Loucura want with our boys. They could be anywhere, but we have to assume they took them for a reason and are keeping them alive. Bozer, I want you to look again into any intel we’ve gathered on places of interest for Loucura. A fresh pair of eyes might be just what we need.” She pointed to the piles of paper documents on the table and Bozer immediately planted himself on the sofa and opened the top folder. “Riley, I want you to go back to that disk. I know it was planted evidence, but there might be some clue as to their whereabouts from the files, or even in the virus itself.” Riley sat down and pulled her laptop out of her bag, ready to tackle the decryption and attempt to recover something from the mess that the Brazilian’s virus had made of her rig.

“I’ll get us some coffee,” Matty announced, and she took herself out of the room to fetch some much-needed caffeine. She wished that she were as confident as she had made out to Riley and Bozer but, in truth, her stomach and heart had sunk when Riley told her about the mission at Van Nuys. She’d give anything to have Mac back bending paperclips in her office, or Jack cracking jokes and attempting to sing Iron Maiden. They were the habits those men had that annoyed her the most, but she’d happily put up with it all to have them back. But, she was the boss: she put on a brave face, poured the coffee, took a deep breath and prepared herself for more searching. They needed a new lead and she was not going to give up until they had found something useful.

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Mac told himself to control his breathing. That sucker punch to the gut had caught him off guard and he was struggling to breathe normally. If he and Jack were going to get out of this, he needed to be calm and focused. They needed a plan. Mac closed his eyes and started listing prime numbers in his head. It was a geeky thing to do, he knew, but numbers always focused his mind. They helped him to stop thinking about the current situation, the panic and the pain, and instead clear his brain to make way for the new idea he needed to escape.

Somewhere around the number 113, Mac realised his breathing had returned to normal and he opened his eyes. Jack was the first thing he saw, still sat opposite him, still unconscious and restrained in the chair: “Jack? Jack, are you OK?” Jack didn’t respond. Mac was worried about his friend; he looked like hell. Mac didn’t dare to shout Jack’s name too loud, as the goons could be just the other side of the door. He instead looked around once more at the room they were in. There was only one way in and out – the big, metal door – and there was no other furniture besides the chairs the agents were in. Mac looked up towards the ceiling to discover a single light bulb hanging from a wire. Then he looked down at the floor, made simply of pure concrete. 

It was then that Mac finally saw it. He finally registered their captor’s mistake and would’ve kicked himself, if he wasn’t tied to a chair. He chuckled quietly, for it amused him how the bad guys always seemed to make a mistake. In this instance, the olive-skinned man had allowed his emotions to get the better of him and it was in that moment that he had slipped up. He just couldn’t resist the urge to get in one last punch, and it was then that he had placed the stun gun down. It was after the punch, when he was busy gloating, that he had forgotten to pick the stun gun back up and had left it behind. Right next to Jack’s chair.

“Jack!” Mac tried again with renewed strength, “Jack, I really need you to wake up now.” Mac pushed his feet down against the ground as hard as he could, fighting against the zip ties. He was able to lift his chair a few millimetres, before he allowed it to hit back down on the ground, creating a metallic bang. He hoped the sound would be enough to wake his friend. When it didn’t work, he tried again. The zip ties dug into his ankles as he manoeuvred his chair to lift it for a third time. “Come on, buddy. Please? Jack!” Mac raised his voice a little more as he said Jack’s name again and this time Mac saw Jack stir. His head lifted just a little and then he let out a small, deep sigh. “Yes! Jack, welcome back! How’re you doing?”

As Jack began to regain consciousness, he realised that every muscle ached. There was not one part of his body that was not screaming at him and, honestly, it made him want to stay unconscious. However, it was Mac’s voice he had heard, and he knew he had to wake up. He was no good to Mac if he was out cold. How would he protect his friend if he had his eyes closed? Well, he had actually saved Mac blindfolded once, but that was not a story they needed to relive right now. Jack was focusing all his energy on lifting his head and opening his eyes. He made an attempt to say Mac’s name, but it came out as a low groan.

“Jack?” Mac’s voice sounded worried. 

Jack knew he was taking a long time to open his eyes. ‘I’m trying, Mac, really I am, just bear with me buddy.’ He wished he could say these words out loud but had to make do with saying them in his head and hoping that Mac had somehow developed the ability to read Jack’s mind. Slowly but surely, Jack raised his head and opened his eyes. He looked over at Mac and fought the urge to close his eyes again. “Mac?” Jack’s voice, when it eventually came out, was croaky and weak. Mac knew that this was partly just an after effect from the choke hold the big henchman had Jack in earlier, but the raspy voice combined with the red, black and blue face, made Mac worry about his friend even more.

“It’s me, Jack. I’m sorry to rush you, but I need your help to get us out of here and I have no idea how long we have before they come back.”

“Mmm,” Jack responded with little more than a noise. He understood what Mac was saying, he just didn’t know how much help he’d be right now. Since regaining consciousness, he had added pounding headache, suspected broken ribs, reopened bullet wound and bruised jaw to the list of things he knew were wrong with him. “What do you need, Mac?”

“OK,” Mac began, making sure he spoke slowly and clearly. Now was not the time to be confusing a half-conscious Jack with complicated instructions. “I need you to listen carefully, Jack. I think I have a plan.”

“I’m not going to like it, am I?” Jack asked.

Mac chuckled despite himself: “Probably not, but I’ll try to not get you shot this time, OK?”

“Deal,” Jack croaked.

“I need to you push your chair over. You need to push it over, so you are lying on your left side. You should have just enough give in the zip ties around your ankles to do it.”

“Since I can’t think straight at this particular moment, I’m just going to trust you, Mac, OK? I have my doubts already, and we’re only on step 1, but I’m gonna trust your crazy brain and go with it.” Jack looked over at Mac and could see that he was sincere. Jack knew he just had to trust him, no matter how strange the scheme sounded. Jack pushed his right foot down to the ground and shifted his weight left in his chair. When the chair didn’t go down on the first try, he did it again. The chair fell with a crash and Jack responded with another groan. If he didn’t think his ribs were complaining enough before, they were downright yelling at him now.

“You OK, Jack?” Mac took Jack’s nod in response as an OK to keep going and proceeded with the next instruction. “Just in front of your left hand, there’s the stun gun. The idiot who’s interrogating us left it behind. If you can get it to me, I can use the parts to get us untied and, hopefully, out of here.”

Jack looked to the ground and saw that the stun gun was a few inches away from his restrained left hand. He used his bodyweight to shift himself, and the chair, the few inches he needed. As he did so, he heard another crash and flinched in reflex. When he opened his eyes, he saw Mac lying on the ground as well. Mac had tipped his own chair to the right so that the men were now facing each other on the concrete floor, still attached to their metal chairs.

“I really hope our ‘hosts’ don’t walk in right now,” Jack quipped, “imagine having to explain this.”

Mac shuffled forwards in his chair, and Jack did the same, realising that Mac was trying to get closer to him. When they were close enough to both hold the stun gun, Mac instructed Jack to keep hold of one side of it, while he pulled hard on the other side, breaking the machine into two pieces – front and back. Mac turned his half towards himself and noticed, to his horror, that the stun gun had been heavily modified. Both the current and the voltage had been tampered with, meaning Jack must be in agony. He had been wondering why the shock they had received on the bench had rendered them unconscious, and now he had his answer.

He took one of the screws out of the now-cracked casing and used it to hold open the tongue in the zip tie on Jack’s left hand. “Pull your left hand up, away from the chair arm, Jack.” Mac was still giving Jack clear instructions. Despite Jack’s witticisms and flippancy, Mac could see from his eyes that the man was still in pain. But, as Jack pulled his arm away from the chair, the zip tie pulled open easily. Mac talked Jack through returning the favour on Mac’s right wrist. Once Mac’s hand was free, the rest was simple. He quickly and efficiently undid the zip ties on his own left hand as well as his ankles, before undoing those that restrained Jack.

When he had undone all the zip ties, he noticed that Jack had to fight to get himself up on his feet. Mac held out his arm to help his injured friend. Jack hesitated, but then took Mac’s arm as he stood up. Standing was a huge effort for Jack and, as it turned out, it was a good job he took Mac’s arm as he was pretty unsteady on his feet for the first few steps. 

“You OK, Mac?” Jack had now noticed Mac’s black eye as they stood face to face. He hadn’t been able to focus well enough to see it, till now.

“I’m fine, Jack, thanks to you. I’m more worried about you and about getting out of here. What do you remember about what they said?” Mac was concerned that Jack was more than just physically injured and that the shocks may have had mental or psychological effects too.

“I dunno, something about a bomb?” Jack offered. Mac breathed a sigh of relief, but then stopped short as he heard footsteps on the other side of the door. Jack must have heard them too, as he suddenly swore under his breath. “Now what?”

Mac ran to the centre of the room and picked up one of the metal chairs. He handed it to Jack before grabbing the other for himself and pulling Jack to stand with him at the side of the door. When the door opened, they would be stood behind it, and Mac was hoping that the element of surprise would give them the advantage and they’d be able to fight their way out.

He was partly correct, at least.

Alert to a new danger, Jack now looked surprisingly ready for a fight as the locks on the door were pulled back and the door swung open. The olive-skinned man stepped through, closely followed by his two henchmen. All three were in the room before they really registered the sight before them. There was an almost comedic moment – it would’ve been funny to Mac had they not been in such immediate danger, anyway – when the man looked at the outside of the door, as if to check that this now empty room was the same one they had used to keep their prisoners captive.

In the confusion, Mac pushed against the door that was now in front of them. The two agents swung their metal chairs at the two henchmen. Both Mac and Jack made contact, sending the goons reeling. It wasn’t long before the two burly men recovered, though, and Mac and Jack swung again. It seemed the olive-skinned man, leader though he obviously was, was not used to having to do the dirty work of actual fighting and so he remained a few feet away, observing the contest from afar. It wasn’t until one of Jack’s swings knocked his bodyguard to the ground, that the man began to look worried. As the bodyguard went flying, Mac grabbed Jack’s wrist and they ran.

Mac had been right, it turned out. They were in a launderette. There were frosted windows high up in the wall, meaning they were probably underground or in a basement of some kind. Mac listened intently as they ran between machines, weaving through the main room. Mac ran in front, Jack behind, and he could just hear cars outside on the street above. As they ran, Mac grabbed a few small items that would fit in his pockets or his hands – who knows what might come in useful? Some of the stun gun parts were also stored in his top pocket but he knew he would probably need more than that to escape. Mac continued to run in the opposite direction from the room, hoping that they would come across an exit point soon.

Mac was busy collecting useful items for their escape, so he didn’t really notice when Jack’s running slowed as his tired, aching legs failed him. It was very noisy in the laundry room, so Mac didn’t hear Jack shout his name because his lungs were screaming at him behind broken ribs. He didn’t hear the struggle, as the two large adversaries, along with their boss, all now fully recovered from their disagreements with a chair, overpowered Jack and held him down.

He did hear the gunshot, however, and it was the only sound needed to make him stop running and give the man holding the gun his full attention.


	6. Chapter 6

“I thought that might get your attention,” the man sneered, as Mac turned to see where the sound of the gunshot had come from. What he saw made all thoughts of immediate escape leave his mind. It was their ‘interrogator’ who was holding the gun. His two sidekicks were holding Jack down on the floor. Jack was lying face down and the muscular bodyguards were by his sides. Each of the big, dumb goons had one of Jack’s arms twisted up behind his back, with one of their knees on his spine pinning him down. Mac glowered at the olive-skinned man, who was now aiming the gun at his best friend, prone and helpless under the weight of the two giant enemies.

Mac’s mind raced as he mentally listed what he now had stored in his pockets. Lots of useful items, but nothing that could instantly take down three men, one of whom had a gun pointed at Jack’s head. He held his empty hands above his head, eager to show that he was not a risk to them. He did not want to be responsible for Jack being shot. “OK, yes, you got my attention. Now what?”

“Are you kidding, dude? Just run!” Jack was furious that he had been caught. He kicked his legs in an attempt to get out from under his captors. He was mad that his own state of injury and health were the reason that Mac was not running out that door to freedom right now. “Get out of here!” Mac continued to stand in place, unwilling to leave his friend behind. He knew, from experience, that Jack would do the same in his position; if Mac were injured and Jack were the one with an escape, he would not leave. Their motto was always the same: they escape together or not at all.

The man had clearly lost his patience with Jack and he yelled above the noise of the machines. “ _Quieto!_ Shut up! I am not interested in anything either of you have to say anymore. I am done. You will do as I ask. No more discussions, no more choices, no more arguing!” He kicked Jack in the ribs as he said this and gave a nod to the slightly larger of the two bodyguards – the one holding Jack’s left arm. Mac recognised him as the same one who had strangled Jack earlier, and he seemed to be enjoying the current predicament Jack was in. Probably because Jack was also the one who had hit him in the face with a chair not 2 minutes before. The large man pushed and twisted Jack’s arm further up his back and Mac only just heard the small ‘pop’. Jack responded with a grunt and a moan, and Mac knew that Jack’s shoulder had just been dislocated. “Nobody says no to me. Especially not an American!” Here he nodded towards the other, slightly less large, man holding Jack who then let him go and walked off alone, back to the room they had just escaped from.

The bodyguard still holding Jack yanked him up off the floor, a movement which was accompanied by a gasp and a pained yelp from Jack, and made him stand up. He took the gun from his boss and held it to Jack’s temple. As the other man returned, Mac noticed he had brought a laptop back with him. The olive-skinned man, now confident that the blonde man would not try and make a run for it, approached Mac with the laptop and opened the lid. He pressed a few buttons and, with a sick, sinister grin, turned it to face Mac. Mac’s face dropped almost imperceptibly, and Jack could see him resisting the urge to lash out as his fists clenched by his side.

“I don’t know who that is,” Mac lied, rather convincingly. On the screen in front of him was Riley’s face. Riley’s mouth was moving, as is she were talking, but there was no sound to accompany the image. She was clearly deep in thought, and her fingers were moving quickly, just to the bottom of the screen, as if she were typing on a computer. Behind her was the distinct décor of the war room, but she was very much alone. For a split second, Mac thought it was a very strange video for the man to have of his friend, until he realised the truth. Mac’s face went involuntarily pale, which did not go unnoticed by either Jack or their captors.

“Hmm, I think you do. Your words may lie well, _senhor_ , but your face tells me the truth. I think you know her. And I think you care about her.”

“Her?” Jack couldn’t help himself; he had to know what was going on and what was making Mac looked so worried. “What’s going on?”

The man turned and grinned at Jack, smug and gloating. He knew he now had the upper hand, and he was enjoying it far too much. “Well, now, I think your friend here has already worked it out. He is the smart one, remember, so why don’t you tell him?” The question was aimed at Mac, but the man turned the laptop screen around so that now Jack could see Riley’s face appear on the screen. Jack pulled forward instinctively at the sight of Riley but regretted it when the action tugged his dislocated shoulder. He winced and instead looked to Mac, hoping for an explanation.

“It’s her webcam.” Mac offered, and his fears were confirmed when the man grinned and nodded.

“Yes, exactly. This is a live feed from your friend’s computer. The virus on the disk has given us access to much, including her webcam.” The man laughed his deep, sinister laugh as Mac and Jack locked eyes. “I have access to that computer and her files. I can steal as much information as I want from it, and I will find her. And when I find her, I will not be as kind as I have been to the two of you.”

“What do you want?” Jack growled. Mac could see the anger flashing in Jack’s eyes and knew he was a man on the edge. All the pain that Jack was feeling was paling now, in light of this new information. Jack knew that his body was losing a battle; it felt like his bones were burning, but he would fight on to protect Riley. Fighting for Mac was one thing but adding Riley into the mix was just a step too far. Jack was ready to kill this guy, but he could not get free.

“I have told you,” the man responded simply, “I want you to set off a bomb for me. Two in fact: one each. They are currently in an empty office upstairs ready for you gentlemen. You will be take upstairs by my friends here. You will strap on the bombs – ah yes, maybe I forgot to tell you they are suicide belts, no matter – you will then take the bombs to the conference room on the same floor, where the Brazilian president is planning to meet some very important people very soon. You will detonate the bombs and kill him. You may get shot in the process, of course,” he continued, “but it does not concern me. You are both very much… how do you say? ‘disposable’?”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re kinda crazy?” Jack responded. He looked over at Mac who was managing to keep his expression neutral. “Didn’t you say ‘la-cruro’ meant ‘madness’?” He asked him, “I can see why they picked that name.”

The man, who was still holding the laptop, shut the lid of the computer with a bang and swung the machine at Jack’s head. It connected with a crack and Jack’s legs buckled beneath him. “We are called Loucura!” The man yelled in Jack’s face, “You would do well to remember that name! For as long as you have left alive, anyway.”

Jack looked dazed and confused, and Mac noticed blood seeping from a spot just above Jack’s right eye. “Kinda proving my point there,” Jack groaned. His words were barely audible, but they still clung onto Jack’s signature sarcasm. Mac shook his head. He was amazed at Jack’s ability to rile an enemy. The man looked to his two bodyguards and said something in Portuguese. Mac didn’t understand what was said, but he soon guessed at it for, a moment later, the two men started punching and kicking Jack’s form, which was now lying on the floor.

“So, what do you say?” enquired the man, talking to Mac this time, “You will go and carry out this bombing?” Mac looked to the man and briefly over at his friend, who was still being beaten on the floor a few feet away. “You can make all this stop by simply saying ‘yes’. I will leave your girlfriend alone and you can take your infuriating friend with you. I rather enjoy the idea of him getting blown up.”

Mac considered his options for the briefest of moments. He shut his eyes, as he could not watch the beating that Jack was receiving. His friend and partner had stopped grunting now, and his right hand was no longer up protecting his face. Mac knew, therefore, that he was probably losing consciousness. The bombs didn’t look like a great option, as they seemed to lead to certain death. Or, so the man who was holding them captive thought. The man had no idea Mac was a bomb expert. He didn’t know about Mac’s EOD training. However, Mac knew that, while entering a room with two bombs, that they were expected to wear and use, seemed like a foolish choice right now, his training meant they had more chance of survival there than down here with two guys beating the sense out of his Texan friend.

“OK.” Mac concluded, “Take us to the office.”

“A wise decision, my friend.” The man yelled a simple instruction at his bodyguards. It must have amounted to ‘stop’ as they immediately ceased their beating. Jack did not move, but Mac could see his friend’s chest rise and fall in heavy, shallow breaths and breathed a sigh of relief. The smaller bodyguard removed his black shirt and tie to reveal a different uniform underneath: a pale blue shirt with a small red logo on the top pocket. He grabbed one of the large, industrial laundry baskets, that were used to collect dirty sheets, and wheeled it over to his boss. “Get in,” the man instructed. When Mac hesitated, the bodyguard holding the gun pointed it at Jack’s head and the instruction was repeated. Mac climbed into the large hamper, guessing that this was how they were going to be smuggled into the office building. Mac lay down at the bottom of the hamper as instructed, and a number of white sheets were thrown in on top. There was a short pause and then Mac felt something heavier fall in on top of him. He shifted around until he recognised the back of Jack’s head and shirt. Jack wasn’t moving, but at least, Mac thought, they were in this together. More sheets were thrown on top, before he felt the hamper begin to move, being pushed – he guessed – by the goon who was now wearing the blue shirt.

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“Whoa!” Riley had been searching her laptop for clues for hours. She had broken some of the encryption, but nothing useful had turned up yet. Bozer had been staring at files for all that time and he was beginning to see double. Again, nothing useful had turned up and both agents were getting frustrated. No-one vanishes without a trace. They knew this, but they couldn’t quite find the clues needed on this terrorist group to help them track down Mac and Jack.

“What is it, Ri?” Bozer had been glad of a distraction when Riley had made the sound that tore him out of his reverie.

“I’ve been searching these documents and this stupid virus for hours, but something just happened. Call Matty and tell her to get in here.”

Bozer got up and went into the conference room a few doors down. Matty had been making phone calls and calling in favours for the last few hours, hoping to find any trace of her agents. Like Riley and Bozer, however, she was also running on empty and hadn’t found anything useful to help them. Bozer called Matty’s name and told her to follow. He knew she would want an explanation but something in Riley’s tone had told him it was an emergency. He hoped Matty would understand, as she followed him quickly into the war room.

“What’s going on, Bozer?” she asked, obviously a little peeved at having been summoned so unceremoniously. “Why the rush?”

“OK, Matty, I told him to come get you,” Riley explained, “something’s happening here.” She nodded at her computer screen and sent it up onto the big screen so that they could see what she could. “Look!” She continued to type frantically as she sent the picture up onto the screen.

“I don’t understand, Riley, this is just a video of you.” Matty replied, “Wait. It’s the view from your webcam?”

“Yeah,” Riley responded, “and it’s what the bad guys are looking at right now!”

“I’m lost, Ri, what do you mean?” Bozer didn’t like it when he felt in the dark. He hadn’t quite caught up yet and needed a few things explaining to him. He suspected Matty had already put two and two together.

“The virus has given Loucura access to lots of stuff on my laptop,” Riley offered, “which I suspected might be the case when my computer first went haywire. I’ve put lots of backstops and firewalls in place, so I’m hoping that the important stuff is safe. Which it has been so far,” she added hastily when she saw Matty’s expression, “but it seems that they can also access my webcam.” The whole time she was explaining, Riley was working very hard to not look suspicious. She knew that if the bad guys had hacked the webcam, they were most likely watching her, and she did not want to let on that she knew about it. “They haven’t bothered to access the microphone. Either because they don’t feel like they need to or because they can’t, I don’t know, but they are watching me right now.”

“How does this help us, Riley?” Matty pushed.

“I can track them!” Riley continued, “By accessing my computer’s systems they’ve left their end open for me to step in and track them down. I don’t know how long I have before they shut down the link, but I’m tracing them now.” She continued to type excitedly as Matty and Bozer stayed quiet, letting her do her job. A few seconds later, Riley cursed aloud and stopped typing.

“What’s wrong?” Bozer asked.

“The connections dead,” Riley groaned, “they shut the computer down on their end or something and I can’t trace it.”

“Did you get anything?” Matty asked hopefully.

Riley looked at her screen carefully before looking up at her boss and smiling. “Actually, I did. I haven’t been able to narrow it down to an exact spot, but I know that our system was accessed from somewhere here in California. If we assume that the computer was accessed in the same place Jack and Mac are being held, it seems they’re still on American soil.”

“And they’re pretty close to home,” Bozer finished, “nice work, Ri!”

“Nice work indeed. Well done, Riley.” Matty stood and thought for a few moments, obviously piecing together parts of the puzzle so far. “If our boys are still in California, then maybe that van isn’t such a dead-end after all. Riley, pull up a map of the van’s route between Marina del Rey and Van Nuys. Maybe the route is the clue. If Jack and Mac are still in state, and they weren’t in the van when it arrived at the airstrip…”

“Then they might have been dropped off somewhere along the way,” Bozer concluded.

Matty nodded and a slight smile appeared on her face. Jack and Mac had been missing longer than they should have been, but they finally had a lead. And, if this new intel was anything to go by, they wouldn’t have to travel far to get them back.


	7. Chapter 7

Matty had been looking at the map for about 10 minutes. She was convinced that there was a clue somewhere along the route that the van had taken, but she couldn’t quite see it yet. She was becoming more and more frustrated and Riley was beginning to worry that Matty’s hunch was wrong. “Show me the satellite view, Riley.”

“Yes, boss,” Riley responded, as she switched the view of the map on the large screen. “Is there anything else I can do to help? Any searches I can run, or…?”

“No, no. I know there’s a clue in here somewhere. I can feel it. I just wish I could see it…” Matty sat down on one of the chairs and pinched the bridge of her nose like she was getting a headache. “I need the room, guys,” she said to Riley and Bozer, “I need a little time and a little quiet.” She waved her hand towards the door and the two young agents exited, closing the door behind them.

Outside in the corridor, they sat themselves down on the stairs, looking through the window at their boss, as she stood back up and stared at the screen once more. 

“You think she’ll find something?” Bozer asked.

“With Jack and Mac’s lives on the line?” Riley responded, looking Bozer in the eye, “You better believe it. She won’t give up until she does. I just wish we could do something to help.”

Bozer noticed fear in Riley’s eyes, for the first time since their friends had gone missing, and he took one of her hands in his. “They’ll be alright, Riley. Mac and Jack have gotten out of tougher situations than this. They’re tough dudes. And if they get into any trouble, they’ll just…” 

Riley, knowing what Bozer was going to say next, joined him with a small smile: “…improvise.”

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Mac was laying at the bottom of the laundry hamper, listening carefully to the sounds around him, trying to figure out where he was. He had heard an elevator button ding soon after he and Jack had been put in the hamper, so he knew they were going somewhere else in the building. Their interrogator had said they would be going to an empty office, so Mac guessed they were travelling up from what he had assumed was the basement. They were in the elevator for quite a while; long enough for Mac to assume they were at least 20 floors up by the time the elevator stopped, and the doors pinged open again. Mac felt the newly-disguised bodyguard push them a hundred yards or so, before pushing them against a door, which opened easily, and through into another room, where all Mac could hear was an air conditioning unit rattling.

When the laundry basket stopped, Mac assumed they were in the office that the man had told them about, but he decided it would not be wise to move before he was instructed to do so. Jack had not moved throughout the entire journey, so Mac assumed he was still unconscious. Suddenly, Jack was lifted unceremoniously from the basket and Mac heard his limp body thud onto the floor. The bodyguard either could not give the instruction to ‘get out’ in English, or simply could not be bothered to wait for Mac to manoeuvre himself out, because, the next thing Mac knew, he was being lifted by a very strong pair of arms and was thrown next to Jack onto the office floor with a grunt.

The bodyguard pointed under a nearby desk. Mac’s gaze followed the stubby finger to see two fairly discrete, but definitely deadly, bomb belts. As Mac registered the bombs, the man in the blue shirt took a lookout position by the office door. Mac didn’t need any verbal instructions to understand what he was expected to do next, but his plan to get himself and Jack out of this mess would not work if Jack was unconscious.

“Jack,” Mac shook his friend’s good shoulder as hard as he dared, “Jack, wake up buddy.”

The thug by the door looked around to see what was happening, but must have understood more than he let on, as he allowed Mac to continue trying to wake his friend. There were, after all, two bombs, and the olive-skinned man had expected both to be worn and used. If Jack was passed out, that couldn’t happen.

“Jack,” Mac tried again, “please.” Mac looked around the room for anything he could use, but realised that their captor had been telling the truth – this was a virtually empty office. There were a few items that Mac could possibly use: four empty desks; three broken office chairs and a large TV screen on the wall. He also reminded himself of the few items he had managed to grab whilst running through the launderette. Their kidnapper had not bothered to check Mac’s pockets before making him get in the hamper. Mostly, Mac assumed, because he was too busy being angry at Jack, but it had played out in their favour. Now, if only Jack would wake up.

When Mac looked back down at his friend, he noticed that Jack had opened one eye. As Mac smiled broadly, Jack opened his other eye and tried to smile back.

“Hey, Jack. Man, am I glad you’re awake.” Here, Mac dropped his voice into a barely audible whisper. He kept their guard from becoming suspicious by making it look like he was checking Jack’s pulse and breathing as he talked. He had no way of knowing how much English this bodyguard knew: “We need to take out our guard. There’s only one. I know you’re hurting, but I’m going to need your help. I think if we go at him together, we can take him down.”

Jack looked up at Mac from his position on the floor. Mac could see the strain on his partner’s face and knew it was taking him every ounce of strength just to keep his eyes open. Jack tried to sit himself up and winced as he felt his muscles scream with every movement. Jack’s voice was scarcely a whisper as he tried to respond: “I can’t, man, I don’t…”

“I know, Jack, I know. I’m sorry to ask you to do this, but it’s not just our lives on the line anymore. I’ll help.” Mac took Jack’s right arm – his good arm – and helped him sit up. Once Jack was sat, Mac allowed him a few moments to catch his breath before pulling him up again till they were both standing.

The bodyguard did not seem too concerned about watching the American agents. He glanced back once or twice, but it seemed his role was clear: watch the door and make sure no one interrupts before the plan can be carried out. It was his blind obedience of his boss’s rules that gave Mac and Jack the opportunity they needed to stand up and allow Jack to get steadier on his feet. Because he was so intent on watching the corridor outside, he didn’t see Mac take one of the sheets out of the hamper and put one end in Jack’s right hand. And by the time he saw the reflection of Mac and Jack approaching him, in the window of the office door, it was much too late to really fight back. After Mac wrapped the sheet around the thug’s thick neck and instructed Jack to pull, there was no time left to do anything about it. Jack pulled with all the strength he had left, while Mac ensured the sheet was in the correct position to cut off the guard’s supply of oxygen.

When the criminal hit the floor, Jack leaned heavily against the wall, out of breath, and Mac turned slowly around to take a better look at the office they were in. He glanced at the bombs under the farthest desk, quickly registering the explosives that had been used. He looked out of the large windows that made up most of the far wall. He looked out at the incredible view, confirming that they were many floors up in the building, as he’d suspected. He saw the ocean in the near distance and a number of buildings that seemed familiar. When Mac swore, Jack looked up to see what was wrong.

“Jack,” Mac explained, “we’re still in LA. And those bombs are most definitely armed.”


	8. Chapter 8

Mac put Jack’s right arm around his shoulders and helped the man stand up. He could see that Jack was hurting, and that taking out the guard had sapped all his remaining strength. It killed Mac to see his friend so hurt and bruised, but the bombs were also an imminent threat. Mac needed to work out what to do. He placed Jack down against one of the desks, making sure he was as comfortable as he could be, before moving over to the next desk, where the bombs had been hidden.

Mac checked the bombs for mercury switches – as they were meant to be worn, he assumed there wouldn’t be any, but better safe than sorry – and, seeing there were none, he picked up the bombs and placed them carefully on top of the desk. The first trigger Mac found on each was a command wire, connected to a red button. These buttons would enable the wearer – Mac and Jack in this case – to set off the bombs themselves. Mac continued to look carefully around the vests and at each wire. He guessed that there would be a second trigger on these vests. Common sense told him that, if Mac and Jack refused to press the buttons, Loucura would need a way to set off the vests anyway. They wouldn’t be stupid enough to send them into the building with bombs that could only be exploded by their unwilling ‘volunteers’, surely.

Mac soon discovered the answer: no, they were not that stupid. Loucura had indeed planned for every eventuality, as Mac discovered a concealed mobile phone trigger on each of the devices. These could go off at any point, if Loucura chose to ring the phones and trigger the devices themselves. Mac, with as much optimism as he could muster, tried to assume that this wouldn’t happen immediately. Loucura wanted Mac and Jack in prime position, in the conference room with the Brazilian president, and they were not there yet.

“You OK, Mac?” Jack’s voice was still raspy and weak, but he couldn’t see what Mac was up to from his position on the floor, and his curiosity was getting the better of him.

“Erm, yeah. Yeah, I’m fine Jack.” Mac began, sounding anything other than fine, “I’m just trying to figure out if these bombs are going to kill us immediately or if we have a little bit of time first.”

“Great. On the bright side, if we get blown up, I won’t be so worried about how much my head is pounding.” Jack joked.

“I’ll try my best not to get us blown up,” Mac assured his friend.

“Anything I can do from here?” Jack asked, not really thinking he could be much help at all.

“Know any good prayers?”

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Matty had been in the war room alone for a good half hour. Riley and Bozer couldn’t be sure how long exactly, as they had been sat the whole time on the stairs, waiting for their boss to call them back in. They had barely moved and hadn’t had much to say, other than to speak reassurance to one another every now and then.

All of a sudden, they saw their boss smile. They knew she had figured something out, and they prepared to be summoned back into the room. Matty turned and waved her hand at them, to do just that. They dashed into the room, not needing to ask anything; Matty was more than eager to share.

“I should have noticed this right away. I can’t believe it took me this long to spot it,” she began. Riley and Bozer simply waited for her to reveal the big idea. “Here, Riley, your map gets a bit vague and disjointed in this part of Beverly Hills.”

“Yeah,” Riley explained, “it was weird. The van used a few alleys and shortcuts. They drove around randomly, like they didn’t know where they were going.”

“Yes,” Matty responded, excitedly, “but they knew exactly what they were doing. They were vague on purpose. They were trying to cover their tracks and throw us off the scent. Unfortunately, their plan actually worked, and I didn’t think of it before.”

“Think of what?” Bozer asked, impatient.

“Here,” Matty pointed at the map where the van seemed to disappear in Beverly Hills, “Wilshire Boulevard.” Matty turned and looked directly at her two younger agents: “That’s the address of the Consulate General of Brazil. I believe that Mac and Jack have been taken to the Brazilian embassy.”

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Mac was still following the wires from the mobile phone triggers to the detonators they were connected to. He wanted to work as quickly as he could but knew that his age-old motto of ‘be careful’ still applied in this situation too. Loucura could make the call at any moment and trigger the bombs. If Mac could cut the connection between the phones and the bombs, then the only way they could be detonated would be via their command wires, making them less of a threat.

He found the wire he needed and started rooting around in the pockets of his jeans. He knew that he had managed to pick up a small pair of scissors whilst running through the basement, and it was these that he needed. Having found them, he cut the correct wire on the first bomb, and then the second. He breathed deeply, knowing that he and Jack were now in no immediate danger. Not from the bombs, anyway. Mac wasn’t exactly sure where they were, but he had guessed – by the fact that the Brazilian president would be visiting this building later that day, and his estimation of where they were in LA – that they were most likely in the Consulate General of Brazil. If this were the case, he had no idea how we would be able to explain their presence if they were discovered. How could they possibly justify the presence of two American government agents in a foreign embassy? Oh, and being in the possession of two bomb vests.

Mac, however, knew that he needed to check on his friend. Jack had been through the ringer and, while he said he was OK, Mac knew him well enough to know that was not the whole truth. The bombs were not an immediate risk, though being in the same room as that much explosive still made Mac nervous when he knew they had nowhere to go. Mac left the bombs on the desk and went over to Jack, still sat on the floor, leant against another of the desks.

“Hey, Jack,” Mac said gently. Jack had his eyes closed, and Mac didn’t want to startle him, “how you holding up?”

“Never been better,” Jack mumbled, eyes still closed. Jack forced himself to open his eyes and saw Mac had sat down on the floor in front of him. “Any ideas on how you’re gonna get out of here?”

“I’m not going without you, Jack. You know that. And I’m still working on that.” Mac answered, honestly. “I want to know how you are,” Mac pushed, “and I mean truthfully.”

“OK,” Jack sighed, and prepared himself to list the things he knew were wrong with him. He told Mac about his broken ribs, bruised jaw, a few broken fingers, sore joints and his suspected concussion.

“I know you have a thick head, Jack,” Mac grinned, “but at this point I’d be more worried about you if you didn’t have a concussion.” When Jack looked at him with a frown, Mac continued, “you’ve been hit over the head a lot today, dude.” Mac suspected that Jack was still keeping something from him, though, and pushed further: “Anything else?”

“Well…” Jack hesitated, but knew he needed to tell his friend the truth. “My arm,” Jack said, defeated, “I know they dislocated it. My hand is kinda starting to tingle.”

Mac looked at Jack’s left arm and observed how it sat limply in his lap. Jack hadn’t lifted it or used his left hand since Mac had sat down opposite him. Jack had used his right arm to point out and list all the things wrong with him, counting them out on the fingers of his right hand.

“We need to put your shoulder back in,” Mac told him. “We can’t risk waiting for us to get out of here, and who knows what damage you could do if we just leave it.”

Jack simply groaned in response, but knew his friend was right. Mac was always right. Jack allowed Mac to grab hold of his left arm, holding it at the elbow and wrist. Jack appreciated how Mac was careful not to grab too close to the aggravated bullet wound, and realised that it felt like a lifetime ago that he had received that injury. Jack looked away as Mac pulled the arm up, till it was perpendicular to Jack’s torso.

“OK, Jack,” Mac began, “you ready?” When Jack nodded, Mac told his friend to take a deep breath and counted down from 5. Mac, knowing Jack like he did, pulled the arm on 3. The early pull caught Jack unaware and he yelled in pain as the shoulder popped and went back into place. Mac quickly grabbed a sheet from the basket and created a sling for his partner, muttering ‘I’m sorry’ under his breath a dozen times. It sucked when Jack was in pain. It sucked more when he was the cause of it. “I’m so sorry,” Mac said finally, “Jack, are you doing OK?”

“Mm-hmm” Jack grunted, through gritted teeth. He took a few slow, deep breaths and regained his composure. The relocation had hurt like hell, but his arm sure felt better now it was done. Jack opened his eyes – he hadn’t realised he’d closed them till now – and smiled at Mac. He knew it would reassure him, and he didn’t want Mac to feel guilty. None of this was his fault, after all. This, all of this, was down to Loucura.

“OK, well, if you’re sure, I need to finish disarming those bombs.” Mac responded.

“What?!” Jack half-yelled incredulously, “the freakin’ bombs are still armed? What the heck are you doing down here? My shoulder won’t matter at all if the two of us end up being blown to high heaven, will it?!”

Mac began explaining about the different detonators and triggers, letting Jack know that the type of trigger meant they weren’t in danger of blowing up at any second, but realised that it was pointless when Jack looked at him exasperated and confused. He stopped himself and, instead, went back over to the bombs to work out how to disable to second triggers and make the bombs safe. He was busy following wires and carefully examining detonators when he heard Jack swear.

“Mac,” Jack continued, “how close are you to disarming those bombs?”

“I think I’m pretty close,” Mac admitted, “but I want to be sure I cut the right wire, obviously. The bombs are more sophisticated than they look. Loucura are better at bomb making than I would’ve imagined.”

“OK,” Jack replied, “you might wanna step up that timetable.”

“Why?”

“Check the door,” Jack answered, simply.

Mac looked up from what he was doing, towards to door and the window beside it. He saw what Jack did and repeated the same swear word. There, staring at them both, like a deer in the headlights, was a member of staff. He was wearing a lanyard around his neck, which made Mac and Jack assume he worked in the other offices here. He was looking from Jack to Mac, and then his eyes landed on the bombs in Mac’s hands. He stared for a moment longer and then ran down the corridor, back to the office he had come from.

“Well, that might’ve made things a little more complicated,” Mac admitted.

“Ya think?” Jack croaked, “Any more of your trademark bright ideas?”


	9. Chapter 9

Mac’s brain was thinking through a dozen different plans at a hundred miles an hour. The only problem was, every plan he’d thought of so far got himself and Jack either injured, arrested or killed. He knew that they would be surrounded any second, and there was no way Mac could help his wounded partner out of the building fast enough before that happened. They certainly couldn’t talk their way out of this one: who would possibly believe their story?

“Hey, Mac?” Jack broke into his stream of consciousness, calling up to him from the ground, “You got a plan that gets us out of here in one piece? Or one that gets us out of here without being arrested? Preferably both.”

“Not yet, buddy, still thinking.”

“OK. Well, I don’t want to make you panic or anything, dude, but you might wanna hurry that plan along. The cavalry is here.”

Mac had cut the final trigger wires on both the bombs, but the arrival of the men with guns outside of the office meant he now had other things to worry about. The bombs were safe – as long as they didn’t get impacted by a bullet or dropped on the floor – but he and Jack were far from safe.

“You want me to use my Texan charm to talk them down, Mac?” Jack was already using his right arm and the desk he was leaning against to get himself on his feet. His head was spinning, his ribs ached, and he felt like he needed to lie down and sleep for a week. Nevertheless, the urgency and danger of their current situation were not lost on him and he wanted to do all he could to get himself and Mac out of this mess. Jack was on his feet before Mac had even managed to get by his side.

All along the corridor outside the office, there were men armed with guns. They had appeared from the elevator at the end of the corridor, and from the offices that Mac had assumed were around the corner, further into the centre of the building. Mac counted 16 armed guards, and that was just the ones he could see. Jack took stock of the men’s armoury. Most of them carried Beretta M12’s and had a Taurus pistol holstered in their belts, the rest had IMBEL assault rifles pointed at the two American agents. They wore Kevlar jackets and one or two of them had thought to bring hand grenades to the party as well. Jack would’ve been impressed with their typically Brazilian armaments if he weren’t at the wrong end of the barrels.

Jack stood next to the desk he had used to get himself up on his feet and held his hands up in the air in a gesture of peace. Mac stood a few steps behind, having left the bombs on the desk where he had been working on them. He didn’t want to move them for a couple of reasons: 1, they might explode; 2, he suspected that the army outside would shoot him if he tried anyway. Still, he hoped the fact that they weren’t actually wearing the bombs would work in their favour.

“We come in peace,” Jack shouted as loud as his croaky voice would allow him, “we’re not here to hurt you.”

“They’re not aliens,” Mac whispered. Jack ignored him and continued his attempt to talk down the small army outside the office.

“The bombs aren’t ours! We’ve been set up. If you’ll let us call our boss, she can explain everything!” One of the men outside the door shouted back a number of sentences in Portuguese, that neither Mac nor Jack understood. “No comprendo!” Jack called back in his heavily accented Spanish.

“They’re also not Spanish,” Mac offered, unhelpfully. Jack simply shrugged and tried again.

“Let us make a call!” This time Jack added actions, but it apparently wasn’t convincing anyone, as the same man as before shouted some more Portuguese at Mac and Jack. This was getting them nowhere fast, but Mac was still struggling to think of a good plan that would get them out of here unscathed.

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After Matty had made her discovery using the map, she had tasked Riley with using traffic cams and street cameras to check the area around the embassy, to see if she could spot any sign of their boys. Bozer had been told to notify the tac team of the newest information and instruct them to prepare for an extraction if needed.

Matty herself had taken to the phones. She knew that if Jack and Mac were somehow in the Consulate General of Brazil, they were not there out of choice. They had been taken there by Loucura and she imagined that it was not for anything fun. Getting American agents, especially covert agents that weren’t allowed to reveal their covers, out of an embassy belonging to another country was tricky at the best of times. Getting them out when that embassy belonged to Brazil, and when they certainly weren’t supposed to be there, was going to be nigh on impossible. So, she was calling in favours, asking questions and hoping she would be able to get something useful to extract Mac and Jack safely. She needed to do all this without damaging the already fragile relations between the two countries. Simple enough, right?

It was while manning the phones, however, that she first picked up the chatter. She heard snippets of information from a few different sources, which she began to piece together. The information was confirmed when an analyst came to share the full story with her: there was an ‘incident’ taking place at the Brazilian Embassy in LA. It involved suspected American citizens and – and this was the part that set her on edge – the Americans seemed to have a bomb.

She got herself to the war room as quickly as she could to find out what Riley had found. In reality, she wasn’t all that bothered. Her gut told her she had been right. This new intel merely confirmed to her what she already suspected: her boys were in the embassy and she needed to get them out.

“Riley, I need you to stay here. I want eyes in that embassy. I know you’re going to have to break some rules, but I don’t care. Hack those cameras and get me a view of what’s happening. Bozer, tell the tac team to mobilise. They need to be ready to go in 2 minutes. And let them know I’m going with them.”

Riley and Bozer glanced at each other with raised eyebrows. Matty was all business and they knew better than to question any of the orders she had given. But if Matty was going in herself, she must really mean business.

“Let’s go bring our boys home,” Matty said, nodding at Riley and following Bozer out of the room to assemble her rescue mission.

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“Well, this isn’t working,” Jack sighed, as his third attempt to rationalise their presence to the leader outside the room resulted in another, even louder, shout of Portuguese aimed at the two men in the office.

“What gave it away?” Mac retorted.

“Alright, no need to get snarky,” Jack snapped, “I’m stuck in here too.”

“OK, OK, arguing isn’t going to get us anywhere fast.” Mac admitted, “Right, I’m guessing that the president has been alerted by now and he’s not going to be visiting after all. At least we can be fairly certain he’ll be safe. Now we just need to figure out how to make sure we’re safe.”

Mac looked around the office for something that could help. He looked through his pockets at the small items he had picked up earlier. Nothing he had gave him any inspiration. There was nothing he could construct that would save them this time. They couldn’t leave the office – they would get shot or arrested – and it seemed they couldn’t explain their way out of it either. Mac had never felt this frustrated before (well, not since Cairo), and he was infuriated that he couldn’t think of one single thing to get him and Jack out of this mess.

“I’m so sorry, Jack,” Mac sighed.

“Sorry? It’s not your fault, buddy. This was all Loucura’s doing. I tell you what: if we do get out of here alive, we can enjoy tracking them down together and making them pay for putting us in this mess.” Jack turned and smiled at his friend, “Deal?”

Mac chuckled, “Deal!” he agreed. “Hey!” he continued, “You said it right!” When Jack looked at him puzzled, Mac explained, “Loucura, you said it right!”

Jack laughed at that, while carefully holding his sore ribs, “Yeah, I knew how to say it all along. I just like making you squirm.”

Mac punched his friend good-naturedly, on his good arm, but Jack then witnessed his partner’s smile disappear and his face suddenly drop. Jack turned to look out at the corridor again to find out what it was that sparked Mac’s sudden change in mood. The leader of the troops outside the office was giving orders. Jack didn’t understand the words the man was saying, but he could witness the effect of them for himself. As the leader gave instructions, the troops began to retreat in formation. They moved backwards, taking themselves down the corridor opposite the office door and behind the walls. Essentially, they were taking cover. Jack gulped, and he heard Mac behind him start to move.

“Mac, they’re taking cover. I know, that you know, that this doesn’t mean anything good.” Jack said cryptically.

“Yeah, I noticed it too, Jack. And I noticed you noticing it,” Mac replied, playing along with Jack’s word games. He knew he was just trying to lighten the mood and distract both himself and Mac.

Jack turned his head slightly so that he could see both what Mac was doing, and what the men were doing outside. As the last of the troops took cover behind the far walls, along the corridor from the office Mac and Jack were trapped in, the leader took his place behind the farthest wall and cocked his rifle, pointing it directly at the office. Mac, meanwhile, had been turning two of the desks onto their sides at the far corner of the room. Next, everything happened so fast it was a big, confusing blur to Jack’s scrambled brain.

As the leader crouched in the perfect position, Mac shouted Jack’s name and grabbed him by his shirt collar. As the leader nestled his rifle in the crook of his shoulder and took aim, Mac half-pulled, half-dragged his injured friend behind the upturned desks in the corner. As the leader took his shot, aiming at the two bombs in the office, Mac threw himself on top of Jack and told him to cover his ears. As the leader’s shot found its target, Mac prayed that the desks would be enough cover to protect him and his best friend from the blast that followed.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AN: I apologise for the huge gap before publishing these last couple chapters! A holiday away, then a particularly crazy start back at school this term (I teach 10-11 year olds), meant I was somewhat waylaid in writing this one.
> 
> There will be 1 or 2 more to come, but I promise not to leave it so long before the next one 

Matty was in the back of the van with the rest of the tac team, hands placed tensely on her knees. The rest of the team were heavily armed, but Matty had only her trusty sidearm for protection – she was going to try for a diplomatic solution first, and rifles and shotguns didn’t exactly scream ‘tact’. Despite her confidence in Mac and Jack, she was feeling nervous. Not that she’d ever admit it to any of her agents, but she was concerned that they would be too late or, if she was in time, that her story would not be believed. Those men were her top agents. She had grown fond of Goldilocks, despite his tendency to ‘improvise’, and Jack… well, Jack was Jack and there was no one ese like him.

“Any other embassy,” she thought to herself, “any other embassy and this would be a cinch. Get in, explain the situation and get my boys out.” Sadly, this was the Consulate General of Brazil and, as they had explained to Jack that morning (it seemed so long ago now), the relationship between the US and Brazil was shaky to say the least; this situation would not go any way to helping that at all.

The van stopped, and the tac team leader called out instructions. They were to hold back, near the entrance and exits, until Matty had gone in and attempted to explain things first. As they stepped out of the van and Matty prepared herself for the imminent discussion with Brazilian politicians, they heard an explosion. Matty and the rest of her team ducked for cover instinctively, but they realised it came from above them. Matty looked up and saw the smoke. There wasn’t much, but it was enough. On a floor high above them, it very much seemed like a bomb had just gone off.

“Oh no,” Matty sighed, mostly to herself. “Why can’t those guys stay out of trouble? Just for one day. Is that too much to ask?” She stood up and motioned to the team to follow, as she walked towards the building and boldly through the front door.

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Up on the 18th floor, Mac was keeping his head down and whispering Jack’s name, giving him a push on the shoulder. For the moment, the troops who had made the shot to blow the bombs were staying away. Mac guessed that they were keeping their distance just in case he and Jack had secondary devices. This worked in his favour: he had time to check for injuries. The desk had done a semi-adequate job of protecting them from the blast, but Mac had still thrown himself on top of Jack when the blast happened.

He reached over and checked Jack’s pulse. It was still there, erratic but strong enough. Mac sighed in relief. He suspected that Jack’s current unconscious state was a culmination of all the trauma he had suffered thus far; his body was beginning to shut down. Jack was a stubborn son of a gun, but even he had his limits. While he suspected Jack wasn’t in immediate danger, physically, they needed to get out. And soon. Mac started at his head, checking for any obvious injuries of his own. He discovered his head wound fairly quickly. It was bleeding, but it wasn’t anything too serious. A minor cut, small headache; nothing compared to the concussion he knew his friend had.

He carried on down his neck, arms and torso and found a piece of shrapnel in his abdomen. It wasn’t in too deep, but it was deep enough. At first, Mac was worried that he hadn’t felt it before now, but then he considered the amount of adrenaline that must be running through his system after the fights and the blast. He took the metal out and crawled over to the linen basket they had arrived in, staying low to the ground and – hopefully – out of sight. It had been knocked over in the blast, and the sheets were scattered over the floor.

Retrieving the scissors from his pocket, he cut up one of the cleaner sheets to create a make-shift bandage and gauze for the new wound on his stomach. As he tied it off, checking it wouldn’t slip, he heard a groan from behind the desk. Before checking on Jack again, Mac looked over to where the door used to be to see if their Brazilian friends were making a return. He saw a glimpse of a gun muzzle around a corner, a reasonable way along one of the corridors. It seemed the troops were keeping them company and hadn’t gone too far. The wall leading to the corridors had completely gone and the windows facing the street were mostly blown out as well. Mac realised that he and Jack didn’t have anywhere to hide if their ‘friends’ decided to make a move. He hoped that they would have a little more time before then. He still didn’t have much of a plan, short of using desk legs to fight his way out, and he couldn’t see that ending well for him and Jack.

Crawling back over to Jack, he saw his friend blinking rapidly, as if trying to get something out of his eyes. He also noticed that Jack was now breathing heavily. This didn’t look good.

“Hey buddy, how you feeling?” Mac spoke softly, keeping his voice low. Jack looked up at him but didn’t respond. “Jack?” Mac pushed, “Jack, tell me how you are.”

“Erm,” Jack seemed distant and dazed. He was looking at Mac’s face, but Mac felt like he wasn’t really seeing him. “Mac?”

“Yeah, bud, it’s me,” Mac responded, putting his hand on Jack’s face to reassure him and to help him focus on Mac’s face. “Can you tell me what hurts?”

“Erm,” Jack hesitated again. Breathing shallow and fast, he finally gave his answer. “What doesn’t… hurt… would be… a… shorter… answer,” he wheezed. “Chest… hurts… Head hurts.” Jack squeezed his eyes shut as if he was trying not to cry out. When he opened them again, he looked Mac dead in the eye. “What about… you? You… OK?”

“Yeah, Jack, I’m fine.” Mac chuckled. Jack could be a pain in the ass, but no one could say he wasn’t loyal to the end. He was a good man, and Mac was not going to let anything happen to him. Not now. Not today. Not ever. “A slight concussion and a few scrapes, but I’ll live.” Jack’s heavy breathing worried Mac. He had already suspected that Jack had received a broken rib or two when the thugs downstairs were beating him up. If one of those ribs had moved in the blast, they could have punctured his lung. “How’s your breathing?” he asked, hoping Jack would tell him honestly.

“Hmm,” was the only answer Jack could manage. Mac bent down and put his head on Jack’s chest. He listened carefully to both sides, and then again, listening to Jack’s breathing sounds. His fears were realised and Mac put his head in his hands, thinking fast and hard, hoping for a plan to come to mind. Thankfully, given the gravity of the situation, Mac had an idea pretty quickly.

He quickly started patting down and emptying his pockets, as he began to remember some of the items he had picked up whilst running through the laundry in the basement. He took out a few cotton buds, a lighter and some thread. Keeping as low as he could, he began to pick his way round the rubble in the room, to get to the desk that the bombs had been on. The desk was now in pieces, but it wasn’t the furniture he wanted, it was the items that had been in the drawer. He eventually found the desk drawer hidden under some rubble, and what he wanted was still there. He took the ballpoint pens with a smile and a sigh of relief, before making his way back to Jack.

He kept looking towards the corridor for movement. He could hear faint voices, but he was beginning to get suspicious. He was sure they would have made a move by now. Were they trying to psyche the Americans out? Trying to get them to make the first move? Were they simply planning an attack and it was taking them a while because Jack and Mac were so unexpected? Were they awaiting orders from someone else, somewhere else? Would they be coming in for the kill? Or were they simply going to arrest and extract them? Mac shook his head and forced himself to focus on the immediate problem: Jack.

He ducked back behind the desks, where he had left his friend, and touched Jack’s hand to let him know he was there. Jack now permanently had his eyes squeezed shut. “Are you still with me, Jack? Feeling OK?” Mac probed. He was trying to gauge how long he had before Jack simply stopped breathing, but he kept his voice light and as carefree as possible. Jack had a tendency to freak out.

“Hmm,” Jack whispered, “just peachy.”

“Well, just hang on, OK? I have a plan to help ease your breathing, but I need to pull a MacGyver first, alright?” Jack smiled at this, though it was sort of a cross between a smile and a grimace, and Mac set to work. This time, Mac decided he should make his gadget before telling Jack what he was going to do. Telling Jack he was making a rather large needle probably wouldn’t do anything to keep him calm, so he set about doing it quietly.

“You’re not… gonna talk me… through it?” Jack teased, “Not gonna… tell me the… physics behind your… genius plan?”

“Not this time partner. You just concentrate on breathing in and out, OK?” Jack nodded slowly and Mac patted his friend on the shoulder.

Mac took one of the pens and removed the ink tube. Wrapping the ballpoint end of it with plenty of sewing thread, he turned it into a plunger that would move up and down inside the barrel. The thread made the plunger virtually airtight as it moved up and down. With that done, he took one of the cotton buds and pulled both the cotton ends off. He took the resulting hollow tube over to the brick wall behind them, the one that was still standing, and began to file down the end on the rough brick. He needed to make it as sharp as possible, otherwise this wouldn’t work. Taking the cotton bud he had made into a needle, he went back to the desk and inserted it into the writing end of the ballpoint pen.

Mac glanced down at Jack: his partner looked pale and in pain. Mac really wasn’t sure if his crude, improvised needle was going to work, but he prayed that it would. He really didn’t think Jack could hang on till help arrived. He used the lighter to melt the plastic ballpoint pen barrel around the cotton bud needle to seal it tight. He pushed the ink tube plunger up and down, using his hand to test whether it was pushing air in and out like a syringe should. So far, so good: his invention worked. Now he just hoped it would be sharp enough and strong enough to act as a needle.

Mac sighed and squeezed Jack’s hand. He knew he would now have to explain what he was going to do. Jack wasn’t going to like this one bit.

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Matty had walked up to the front desk as if she owned the place. She was tense, but she refused to show it. There was no way she was going to leave that building without her ‘guys’. “I demand to see whoever’s in charge here,” she began. “Think about your boss’s, boss’s, boss’s, boss, that will give you a good idea of who I’m looking for.” She looked the receptionist dead in the eye and refused to blink. She would not crack, she would not back down. Her quiet resolve made the receptionist uneasy, just as Matilda Webber had intended.

“Erm… I’m sorry, ma’am, what can I do for you?” the beautiful receptionist responded, in slightly accented English.

“I think you heard me,” Matty snapped. “Whoever’s in charge. Now!”

Despite the receptionist’s attempts to talk Matty down, she wasn’t taking no for an answer. Eventually, the defeated woman accepted her fate and went off to find someone for this persistent American woman to talk to. She returned not 2 minutes later with a very stern-looking man, who was clearly put out by the intrusion. Partly because they were dealing with a rather major incident on the 18th floor and so now was not a good time.

“What is it you want?” the man snapped, not really concerned with good manners or political etiquette at this particular moment.

“I want to discuss the American men that you have trapped on a floor above. They belong to me and I am here to extract them and take them home.” Matty looked the man in the eye as she said these words, trying to determine the impact they had. She needed to know how accurate her assumptions were.

The man visibly started at her words, and Matty knew she was in the ballpark. “We have no idea what you are talking about,” began the man, trying hard to cover his lies, but failing miserably as he was caught unawares.

“Hmm, a likely story,” Matty replied, looking less than convinced. “There was an explosion on one of the higher floors just before I entered this building, and yet you have not evacuated. You are certainly hiding something, and I think that my men are trapped up there. Perhaps you think they are terrorists, perhaps you are just annoyed that there are Americans in your building. Maybe both. Either way, I am not leaving until I negotiate their release.” She stared at the man, daring him to crumble first, to back down. Her stubbornness was rewarded when the man used his mobile phone to call someone. The conversation was in Portuguese, but Matty knew enough words to know he was calling one of his superiors. She smiled, realising she might finally be getting somewhere. She prayed and crossed her fingers, hoping that her agents hadn’t been fatally injured in the blast and that this wouldn’t all be too little too late.

The man finally finished on the phone. “Come with me,” he said simply and quietly, “but only you,” he finished, nodding towards the small number of tac team operatives that were covering her from near the front door. He turned on his heels and walked towards the stairs. Matty followed, motioning for the tac team to stay in the lobby. She was going in alone.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: The final chapter! Thank you so much for sticking with me through this story guys. Especially these later chapters where it's been harder to get them done and published due to work commitments. I hope you're not too disappointed with the ending: I tried to do the story, and the characters, justice.
> 
> Reviews of the story as a whole are very welcome. Future advice would be really useful too. I may begin a new story when work calms down a bit... Let me know what you think of my first full foray in fanfic!

“You’re… going to… do… what?” Jack asked incredulously. Mac was trying very hard to remain calm, for the sake of his injured partner. Mac gently lifted Jack’s bad arm, the one that had been both shot and dislocated that day, out of its improvised sling and rested it on the floor above Jack’s head. Jack winced at the excruciating movement, but he was more focused on the information that Mac had just shared with him than the pain in his arm right now. Mac cut a hole in Jack’s shirt, up near his clavicle, and tore it so that it was large enough for him to see what he was doing.

“I’m going to put this needle into your chest. Your lung has collapsed, that’s why you can’t breathe properly. There’s air around your lung and I have to remove it. Some of it, at least.” Mac was trying to explain it as calmly and plainly as he could but, in reality, he was almost as scared as Jack. He was not a doctor and he had never done this before. Mac had read about it on the internet, and researched the theory, but he had never actually done a needle thoracostomy before. He knew where to insert the needle, but the homemade syringe he had in his hand was less than ideal. “I don’t know how long we have till help arrives, Jack, and I’m not willing to risk it. You’re going to have to trust me, because I don’t know how long you have.”

Jack stared up at his partner and glanced at the needle in his hand. He seemed to be thinking through his options. “OK,” Jack breathed heavily, his breaths becoming even more laboured, “I do… trust… you… Mac. I trust… you… with… my life… Do it.”

Mac breathed deep and took one last look down the corridor. He wanted to check that help wasn’t miraculously arriving before he took this last-ditch measure. He used the fingers on his left hand to gently find Jack’s second rib space. He took the needle in his right hand and pushed it hard against Jack’s chest. Luckily, the point was sharp enough and it broke the skin. Mac breathed a quick sigh of relief, but his friend let out a low rumble of pain.

“I’m sorry,” Mac whispered, but Jack didn’t hear him. He had his eyes closed and was trying hard to think about anything else but where he was, how much everything hurt and whether help was coming or not. Jack trusted Mac completely, but he was no fool; however much he might act it sometimes. He knew they needed to get out of here. Jack would very much prefer if he were alive when help arrived, or when Mac had thought of an ingenious plan to get them out.

Mac kept pushing the needle until it wouldn’t go in any further. He pulled out the ink tube, that was now acting as the syringe, slowly and carefully, listening for the release of air as he did so. Thankfully, he felt and heard some of the air surrounding Jack’s lung pull into the syringe and he saw Jack’s chest begin to rise and fall ever so slightly more comfortably than before. His rudimentary syringe had done the job, but it would only delay the inevitable. This was in no way a permanent solution. It did, however, give Mac a little more time to think through his options and try and find a way out of this mess. Mac pulled the needle out of Jack’s chest and used a piece of sheet that he had cut up to cover the hole and staunch some of the bleeding.

“Jack?” Mac put his other hand on Jack’s forehead and felt the cold beads of sweat that had formed there. He nudged his friend gently with his knee, checking that the Texan was still conscious. “Jack, are you still with me, partner?”

Jack slowly and deliberately opened his eyes and forced himself to look at Mac. He wanted Mac to know he was OK. He needed Mac not to blame himself for what was happening. Jack knew Mac too well and he could only imagine the misplaced guilt that was going around his head at that moment. Jack’s breathing had slowed slightly and, Jack had to admit, his chest didn’t hurt as much as it did before. Everything else still felt the same, but at least he could breathe. “I’m still with you bud,” Jack confirmed, before closing his eyes again as Mac lowered Jack’s bad arm back onto his chest.

“I’m going to find us a way out of here, Jack, I promise.” Mac said this to reassure himself as much as his friend. He sat back, leaning against the desk that had protected them from the blast. He closed his eyes and began to drift. The concussion he had received in the blast was slowing down his processing speed and he hated it. He knew there was an escape – there almost always was – but he couldn’t quite piece the jigsaw together and work out the plan.

He must’ve lost consciousness because the hiss and beep of a walkie-talkie made him jolt awake. He listened as well as he could, but realised it was in Portuguese. For a brief second, he had forgotten where exactly he was, but he looked down at Jack, still lying on the floor in front of him, and it all came flooding back. The walkie-talkie was clearly giving instructions: the tone of voice communicated anger and frustration even if Mac couldn’t understand any of the actual words. He pushed himself up into a crouching position and looked down the corridor opposite the door. Or at least, where the door used to be. The troops were getting into formation and following their leader closer to the room where Mac and Jack were trapped. Mac looked around instinctively to try and find a weapon or something he could use to help. There was nothing. All the bomb parts were blown up already and his pockets didn’t contain anything that could help.

The leader of the advancing detail saw Mac’s head appear above the desk and he let out a series of shots. Mac ducked quickly for cover. Thankfully, the thick desk held up against the gunshots, but the small but lethal militia were getting closer and closer. They had finally realised that the two American men had no second explosives, or even any deadly weapons to fight back. They had also worked out that Mac and Jack had nowhere to go. They had the upper hand in every respect and they were not willing to wait any longer. Another burst of gunshot rang out. This time some of the bullets hit the brick wall too and mortar dust rained down on Jack.

The sound of the second shots shocked Jack awake. He, too, had fallen unconscious again, very soon after Mac had. Mac grabbed Jack’s collar and pulled him further behind the desk. The pulling made Jack grunt in pain, but Mac was more concerned with making sure they were both well hidden behind the little cover they had. Jack’s head came to rest on Mac’s knees and he looked up at his friend.

“None of this is your fault, Mac. And the fact that we’re stuck here isn’t either. I don’t blame you for any of this.” Jack took a moment to catch his breath but started talking again before Mac could protest. “I know what’s going on in that big brain of yours, Mac. Neither of us could’ve seen this coming. Even Matty didn’t have a clue it was all a trap. Iraq, Cairo, Los Angeles… if I’m gonna get stuck in a jam anywhere, I couldn’t think of anyone better to be stuck with.”

Mac chuckled solemnly, “Thanks Jack. I love you too, buddy.”

Another round of shots rang out. One or two of the rounds found a weak point in the desk that was protecting them and pierced a hole right through it, a little way over to Mac’s right. Mac looked at his friend but neither of them could think of anything else to say. They simply smiled and closed their eyes as another round of bullets were shot from another gun, even closer by than the last time. Mac and Jack heard the leader of the group bark a number of instructions in Portuguese and they perceived footsteps as the group organised themselves.

Then, all of a sudden, the noise stopped. The gunshots stopped, the shouting ceased, and it was replaced by a quiet, almost defeated, voice coming over the walkie-talkies of the soldiers. Mac had no clue what the voice was saying, but it seemed, to be calling an end to the attack. The soldiers lowered their guns and stopped advancing. The leader of the group uttered one word in response. A word Mac did understand: “ _Compreendo._ ”

The short silence that followed was broken by a very different voice. Mac listened carefully. It was an American voice, and it was speaking English. It was a very familiar voice.

“Matty!” Mac realised, and he shook Jack’s shoulder as the awareness dawned. Jack didn’t stir, though – Mac noted with relief – he was still breathing. Mac observed that the cavalry was arriving just in time. He wasn’t sure how much longer Jack would be able to hold on. Matty’s voice got closer and closer. She appeared to be ranting angrily about American rights and international government co-operation, but Mac’s slightly jumbled brain couldn’t quite make out the conversation fully. There seemed to be a man with her, who was occasionally answering her accusations with a very heavy Brazilian accent. An official, Mac assumed, from within the embassy. He seemed to have given in to Matty’s demanding tone as his responses were very weary and humbled.

Suddenly, Matty appeared round the side of the desk and Mac distinctly heard her swear, though she uttered the word under her breath. “Hi,” Mac said simply, “I’m hoping you’ve come to get us out of here?”

“This one is going to take a lot of explaining,” Matty responded. “I’m hoping there’s a good story or two here that I can use to help us, Goldilocks.”

“Yeah, just a few,” Mac answered, “but we need to help Jack first. He’s not doing so good, Matty.”

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Jack woke up almost two days later in the hospital wing of the Phoenix. When he opened his eyes, he was expecting to be trapped in that stupid office with Mac leaning over him. He was surprised to see Matty’s face instead.

“Um, hi?” Jack was not entirely sure where he was or how he got there, but Matty seemed to be smiling. This had a strange effect on Jack: it made him feel both safe and uneasy at the same time. “What’s going on?”

“What do you remember, Jack?” Matty pressed.

“I remember been taken in the park, been beaten up by big, dumb Brazilian gangsters and placed in an empty office with a couple of bombs. I also seem to remember Mac sticking a big needle in my chest and some gunshots. How much of that really happened?”

“All of it, Jack, if Mac’s version of events is anything to go by. It appears you’ve been through the ringer. How do you feel?”

“Crap.”

Matty chuckled at his all-too-honest assessment. Her easy laugh made Jack smile, but he still somehow felt like he was in trouble.

“Are you here to tear me a new one?” Jack asked, too tired and in pain to beat around the bush anymore.

Matty visibly started and looked him dead in the eye. “Jack, I’m here to see if you are OK. We might not always see eye-to-eye,” Jack scoffed at the understatement, but Matty continued, “but you are a great agent, Jack. You are loyal to a fault and, without you, Mac probably wouldn’t have survived this long in the field.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure the opposite is true as well,” Jack admitted, casting his mind back to the many times Mac had saved his ass too. “He saved my life on this one, right?” He wanted to confirm what he already knew to be true: he wouldn’t have made it out of this one alive without Mac’s help.

“That’s true,” Matty admitted. “You have a major concussion, two broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder and you had a collapsed lung. As well as a lot of other bumps and bruises from been beaten up and blown up. Mac most certainly saved your life. But,” she continued, “he told me what you did, too. I know that you would die for that man, Jack. I know you would gladly give up your life for his; however, it got a little too close this time.”

Matty got up off the chair beside his bed which, unbeknownst to Jack, she had been occupying for the last 12 hours, and turned to exit the room. Jack frowned at his boss’s back, and then smiled, “Ah, Matty, I knew you cared really!”

Matty turned quickly and gave her operative a stern look. Jack lowered his eyes, expecting another reproachful reply. “Of course I do, Jack.” Matty turned quickly and exited the room before Jack could even process her response.

Mac walked through the door while Jack was still reeling and saw his confused look. “You still concussed, buddy? You look like you’re trying to remember your own name!” Mac walked over to Jack’s bed and took the seat that Matty had just vacated. He looked his friend up and down. He made a mental note of the black eye; the bruised face and jaw and the large gash on Jack’s head. He saw the chest tube coming out of his left side and the new sling on his arm. The extent of Jack’s injuries were less scary now that he was under the care of proper doctors, but Mac still couldn’t quite believe what Jack had gone through to protect him.

Jack saw his young friend looking at each of his injuries and smiled to comfort him. “I’ve come back from worse, Mac. I’m gonna be fine,” Jack reassured him, “thanks to you.”

“I’m not sure you have been injured worse than this, Jack,” Mac rebuked him, concerned, “but I’m really glad you’re OK. You had me worried there for a little while.”

Jack smiled but said nothing. Mac grabbed Jack’s hand briefly and squeezed. He didn’t have the words to thank Jack for all he had done to help him: either that day in the embassy, or any day before that. And he knew that Jack didn’t really know how to say thank you in return, either. The friends settled instead for just smiling and nodding at one another. Looking out for each other was part of their job: it was what they did. However, a long time ago it had gone beyond a job and had somehow become a privilege. Neither of the men could pinpoint exactly when that had happened, but both of them were very glad it had.


End file.
